From a lawsuit tracker to an in-house legal desk — Nayara Marques
Mesa JurídicaLegal tech · own product2026

From a lawsuit tracker to an in-house legal desk

Mesa started as a record of every labour lawsuit a company carries, with numbers the legal team can check. Interviews with in-house lawyers showed that outside firms run the lawsuits and the team runs a department. I turned Mesa into the desk that department works from, and cut the first version down to what one buyer needs to see.

In-house lawyers manage firms, not lawsuits. I turned Mesa into the desk a legal department works from, and cut the first version to what one buyer needs.

Role
Founder and product designer. Research, strategy, design, design system and build.
Users
In-house legal teams at groups with large labour caseloads.
Timeframe
2026, ongoing.
Built
Designed and coded by me with Claude Code, on Mesa's own design system.

01 — Context & my role

In Brazil, a company with thousands of employees carries hundreds or thousands of labour lawsuits at any time. The information sits in firms' reports, court systems and the legal team's own spreadsheets, and the in-house team still answers to the board for every number.

Mesa is my own product. I do the research, the product strategy, the design, the design system and the build, using Claude Code to write the code I design.

02 — The first bet

The first version was a clean record of every case a company has, built from public court sources and checked against the client's own spreadsheet. The data held up. The open question was what a legal team does with it every morning.

On one large group's records, Mesa found 98.3% of the cases listed on the official court certificates: 3,334 of 3,390, across four regional labour courts.

03 — What the interviews changed

I interviewed two in-house legal teams: a legal director and a legal manager at one group, and an in-house lawyer at another. Three findings changed what Mesa is for.

Most departments hand their lawsuits to a network of firms, tiered by case size. The team's job is managing those firms, not writing filings. Who analysed what, what was flagged and what leadership signed off. The team needs that history to show it warned in time. Only the firm running a case can say whether a loss is probable, possible or remote, and that call moves the quarter's results.

Drafting templates left the plan: the firm writes the filings, so the team needs one folder per case with everything the firm sent.

04 — The direction

Mesa became the place an in-house legal team works from, not a report it reads. One top bar holds the product: Dashboard, Cases, Firms, Reports and Events.

The lawyer's view. A lawyer opens on their own cases, lawsuits and demands in one table, ordered by the next event, with overdue deadlines in red.

What the desk is made of

The lawyer lands on what needs them today. Managers also see what has no owner yet, because assigning is their first job. Every case has its firm, and the firm reports the value at stake and the chance of loss. Firms are tiered as strategic, volume or correspondent. Lawsuits and internal requests sit in the same Cases table. Adding cases is one window, and Mesa detects which is which. HR and other requesters see only their own demands: what is open, the conversation and the files. Firm, client, company, court, person, lawyer and claim pages all show an overview with their cases, three numbers and what needs attention. Learn one page and you know them all. Cases, firms and the day are the core. Oversight, supplier compliance and contracts are modules on top, added when a client needs them.

The core screens

The case page. Who is in the case, its dates and values, and who looks after it, with the firm running it named beside the record.
Firms in front. Managing firms is the team's job, so each firm has its own page with its cases, three numbers and what needs attention.
One window. The team pastes what it has and Mesa recognises each case and its court before anything is added.
A small door. Requesters see only their own demands and their deadlines, without learning a legal tool.

05 — The MVP strategy

The vision is a department's whole desk. The first version is what one warm lead needs to see at a dated presentation, and one rule decided every cut: if that client does not need it on day one, it waits.

A real lead and a fixed presentation set the scope, not a feature list. Phase 1 is a clickable prototype of every module with realistic demo data and no server. Phase 2 adds the server, email, firm access and AI, after a privacy review. Screen, actions, states, edge cases and gaps in the flow, then one round of adjustment. Smaller details go to a list for after the first version. Below 1024px, Mesa says it works on a computer. Contracts were the biggest ask in the interviews and a product of their own: designed, and held for after the first client. Four dashboards (team, board, controllership and compliance) were built as explorations and stay hidden.

A security review stands between the prototype and the first real client. Nothing goes live until it is cleared.

Desktop only. Below 1024px, Mesa says it works on a computer instead of squeezing the tables.

06 — AI that shows its work

Legal teams sign their name under every number, so Mesa never hides where a number came from. Three rules hold for everything Mesa produces, now and in the AI features planned for phase 2.

Anything Mesa produced carries its seal (✦), and actions Mesa takes use their own button, so a person can always tell Mesa's work from the firm's or the team's. Value at stake and chance of loss come from the firm running the case. Mesa never estimates the provision itself. The phase 2 features, a contract summary and suggested points to review, arrive as drafts the lawyer checks, with the source beside them.
Mesa's seal. On a case's timeline, a deadline Mesa read from the official gazette carries the seal, and its source says so.

07 — How I build it

I build alone and with AI, and AI drifts fast. So the rules live in the code, and a check stops a screen that breaks them.

Seven type styles, with the serif kept for the brand, numbers and highlights. One corner radius, three elevations, and every component in one catalog. A script fails any screen that breaks the design system rules before it ships. A glossary of product concepts and a log of every decision, so a cut stays cut and the next screen starts from the same words. Every feature is a task with its five parts, in the phase it belongs to.
The type scale. A short, closed list in the component catalog, each style named for its job.
One number component. Every number in Mesa is a label, a value, one line of context and a link, so a figure always says where it comes from.

08 — Results so far

Mesa has no live client yet, so these are the results of the work so far, not of use.

Mesa's record matched the official court certificates on a large group's caseload. The product plan was rewritten the same day as the interviews, and every screen since follows it. The MVP went from a whole department to five items, built as a clickable prototype for a warm lead's presentation.

09 — What I learned

Three lessons, two about the product and one about the practice.

The people I was tracking lawsuits for do not run lawsuits. They manage the firms that do, and the product had to follow that. Writing down why something waits is what made the cuts stick, and what kept the first version small enough to finish. Building alone with AI, the design system's check is what keeps many screens reading as one product.
Product design

Let’s build a product for people who sign their name under every number.

I research, design and build products end to end, and scope the first version to what a real buyer needs.

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