Team size: Four
Major legal advisors: VdA, ML, SPS, PLMJ, GPA, Andersen
Jurisdictions your role covers: Portugal, other EU markets, UK and Mexico
Career Biography
Patrícia Mendes became a lawyer driven by a strong sense of fairness and a desire to create impact. Early in her career, she chose a corporate path to work closer to business decisions and value creation.
After starting in litigation management at Santander Central Hispano Leasing, she joined ALD Automotive, where she built the Legal function from the ground up. She partnered closely with senior leadership to support business expansion, redesign processes, and enable new revenue streams, including renting solutions and used car partnerships. She was promoted to Head of Legal and later assumed responsibility for Crediagora, where she led governance enhancements, mitigated integrity risks, and strengthened consumer protection during a period of significant regulatory change.
At Volkswagen Financial Services Portugal, where she has spent the past 15 years, she currently serves as Head of Legal, Compliance, and Human Resources. She played an important role in launching the Volkswagen Bank branch and the renting business in Portugal, both delivered within ambitious timelines and critical to market positioning.
She has led cross-functional projects, including international M&A contributions and the establishment of an IT Hub in Porto, reinforcing digital capabilities. She also integrated sustainability into the organisation’s strategy, embedding ESG principles into decision-making.
Beyond legal leadership, she oversees HR, focusing on talent development, culture, and organisational effectiveness. Her leadership approach is centred on empowering teams and contributing to their development.
Her career is defined by connecting legal expertise with business strategy, driving transformation, and delivering sustainable, long-term value.
What do you value most in external advisers working alongside your team: sector knowledge, responsiveness, innovation, or something else?
Respecting to external advisers, I value the knowledge, the capacity to understand the business and the context of our requests and to aid in an effective and pragmatic way, and the balance quality vs costs. I also value innovation and capacity to find suitable and compliant manners to support the business.
How has the role of the legal function evolved within your organisation over recent years, and where do you see it adding the most strategic value today?
The legal function evolved over recent years, enlarging the scope of legal matters and thus, the legal knowledge such on regulatory, antitrust, IT and ESG. Legal team is also focusing on automation of processes aiming to create room for more strategic thinking. We are adding value also by challenging the way the business is done in a proactive way.
I believe we are running in a time where Legal and Compliance will be strategic to ensure and enable Artificial Intelligence use is a responsible way, rather than be replaced by it.
The most strategic value we may add at the time being is to enhance, from a legal and compliance perspective, the use and implementation of Artificial Intelligence by the company. AI is also being used by Legal and Compliance department in a day-to-day and we are aiming to implement software and agents that allows us, to deliver faster and with increased quality. By using automation and AI and by developing a broader knowledge of the legal team, I believe we evolved and will evolve further in the next years.
In what ways has technology or process innovation changed how your legal team operates?
Legal team started the implementation of processes automation (RPAs) in 2025. Legal team automated (1) the validation of law firms’ litigation fees invoices, saving time to the team on a routine task (2) the cash allocation of values paid by Customers within litigation procedures, saving 40% time. We continue evaluating other processes where automation and AI can help.
