How Michel Nkansah is Building The Way Ghanaians Access the Law

Michel Nkansah has spent nearly a decade working across technology and law, from building a simple website for law students in Ghana to leading product teams developing software for lawyers across the UK, Ireland, and the Middle East. Along the way, he has worked at legal-tech startups, the UK Ministry of Justice, and one of the world’s largest law firms, while building startups and a legal-tech community in Ghana. 

We sat with Michel to discuss how an early obsession with technology shaped his career, what moving from Ghana to the UK taught him about building products, and why he has recently started creating content about African tech products.

When you were younger, was law always what you wanted to do?

Not really. My father wanted me to study law.

It’s one of those very African-parent situations where your parents sometimes tell you what they hope you’ll become rather than what you actually want to do.

I studied law for my first degree in Ghana, but even before university, I knew I probably wouldn’t practise it. What I was really obsessed with was technology.

I was the kind of child who would take computers apart, try to fix them, connect the internet at home, and generally be fascinated by how technology worked. I knew I wanted to do something in technology, but I didn’t know exactly what that would look like.

So how did you eventually find your way into legal tech?

It started while I was studying law. A lot of the case law we needed was in physical books, which meant going to the library every time you wanted to read something. I thought that was an inefficient use of my time. So I built a website where I uploaded soft copies of cases I could find online, and my classmates could download them.

This was around 2013 or 2014, when technology wasn’t as mainstream as it is today. It started as something I built for fun, but while researching, I discovered an actual industry called legal tech.

Were you making money from it?

No. It wasn’t even really a company.

It was just a product I was excited about building, and my friends were using it. It had no business model, but it ended up creating an opportunity for me.

One of my lecturers was the founder of DennisLaw, a legal-tech company in Ghana, and he already knew what I had built and what I could do.

After university, while I was doing my national service at Ghana’s Attorney General’s office, I was also working with the startup. Once I finished national service, I moved there full-time. So I didn’t really have a gap between school and work. I went directly into the industry because I had built something that someone already knew about.

What was working at a legal-tech startup like?

It was difficult because lawyers are some of the most conservative professionals when it comes to changing how they work. They are trained around processes, procedures, precedent, and argument, so convincing them to adopt a new piece of software can be extremely difficult.

That was one of the biggest things I learned early in my career: how do you get lawyers who are comfortable with an existing process to change their behaviour and use technology instead?

Things have changed considerably now, especially with the rise of generative AI. A lot more lawyers are interested in technology because they can immediately see what AI might change about their work, but before that, introducing technology into legal workflows could be a very difficult sell.

What made you move from Ghana to the UK?

I came for a master’s degree in international law. The process itself was fairly straightforward: I applied, got admitted, and moved, but my motivation was a little different. I wasn’t moving because I wanted to leave Ghana permanently. I wanted to experience what technology looked like at a higher level.

I had been following companies like Paystack from the very beginning. I watched that ecosystem develop, and I wanted exposure to an environment where tech companies had more resources and infrastructure.

My thinking was: come here, learn how things are being built, and eventually take that knowledge back home.

What stood out to you about working in the UK compared to working in Ghana?

The environments are very different. The first difference is a much stronger support system for founders in the UK.

Government-backed programmes, funding opportunities, educational resources, and organisations are specifically designed to help businesses grow. I experienced this directly when I worked with the UK Ministry of Justice on LawtechUK, a programme that supported legal-tech founders with resources and funding.

We don’t have enough of that back home. If you are building a legal-tech company in Ghana, for example, you are often figuring almost everything out yourself.

The second difference is resources. A lot of African startups simply don’t have enough funding. Sometimes employees don’t even have basic things like company laptops or reliable internet support.

In more developed ecosystems, many of those basic requirements are already taken care of, which allows people to focus more on the actual work.

The third difference is speed. From my experience, people in the UK and in places like San Francisco are extremely focused on getting things done quickly. That work culture is very different from what I experienced working in startups in Africa.

How has living in the UK changed you professionally?

A lot. I’ve had the opportunity to work with people from many different backgrounds and across different parts of the legal industry.

I’ve worked for a major sports-law publisher, worked with the UK Ministry of Justice, and today I work at Dentons, where I lead a product team building software for lawyers across the UK, Ireland, and the Middle East.

The biggest lesson for me has been realising that there isn’t really a ceiling on what you can achieve professionally.

You’ve also started creating tech content recently. Where did that come from?

Interestingly, content isn’t completely new to me.

Before I got deeply involved in legal tech, I worked part-time as a social media manager while I was at university.

A friend in Accra owned a digital marketing agency, and through him I started managing accounts for some major brands in Ghana. I was behind quite a few brand accounts and online campaigns around 2014, 2015, and 2016. Eventually, I stopped because I became more interested in legal tech.

For years, people close to me kept telling me that I had a lot of useful information and should share more of it online, but I wasn’t particularly interested in putting myself out there, and then recently, I decided to actually do it.

What made you decide to approach content differently?

I didn’t want to create the same kind of content everybody else was already making. With tech products, people often tell you, “Go and download this app,” but they don’t show you how it works, and because I’m a product manager, I naturally pay attention to the details: features, flows, user experience, and what could be improved.

So my approach is to actually open the product, use it, show people how it works, explain what I like, and sometimes suggest things I think the company could improve.

How do you balance content creation with your full-time job and other projects?

It hasn’t been too difficult. I mostly work from home when I’m not travelling, so I block out time after work.

I might finish work around 5:30PM, spend an hour shooting content, and then use that same period the next day to edit.

Treating it as something with a specific time block makes it much easier to manage.

How does Accrue help with sending money home?

I use a lot of remittance products, and because I’m a product person, I’m very particular about user experience. I can have ten different financial apps on my phone, and if I open one in the morning and don’t like something about the experience, I might use another one that day.

That’s how seriously I take product design. So if I publicly create content about a product like Accrue, it means I genuinely like something about the experience.

For me, good technology is not just about saying a product exists. The product should make the thing you are trying to do noticeably easier.

You’ve said you don’t necessarily see yourself staying in the UK permanently. Is Ghana still the long-term plan?

Yes. I go back to Ghana about twice a year, and I have a few startups running in Ghana, including fintech businesses, although they’re not all publicly associated with me.

I also run Legal Tech Lounge. The idea is to bring lawyers, founders, and people working around technology together.

One of our major events is the Accra Law Tech Hangout, which we’ve been organising for several years.

We typically get around 800 people, with an audience that is roughly 70% lawyers and 30% business professionals.

It has become one of the ways I stay involved in the Ghanaian ecosystem while living and working in the UK.