The Portuguese company Rolling Space launched in the second quarter of this year, in full pandemic, a cloud management system for lawyers and is implementing 40 licenses of the product in law firms in Portugal.
In an interview with Jornal Económico, CEO Hélder Costa explains how security is guaranteed with Salesforce technology.

What led you to create a solution for the legal area?

In the course of our activity and in our interaction with various clients, we found that, in terms of legal practice, the way the activity was performed was obsolete: information about the different processes was scattered across various applications, subject to complicated management and with potential losses of time and data. We then realised that there was an opportunity to satisfy this need for a management system for the legal area in Portugal. Taking advantage of our experience with several legal services companies, we developed the Rolling Legal platform, a simple and intuitive system that, in an innovative way, aims to meet the recurring needs of these professionals: automate routine tasks, record times for sending fee notes, make decisions based on analytical data about the processes, among other tools necessary for the management and success of a law firm or legal department. The close relationship with the clients has turned them into business consultants, with theoretical research sessions on the topics under consideration and research on how to optimize processes, crossing them with legal guidelines, in order to create a product that is transversal to all clients with needs in this field of management. Although there are several national platforms dedicated to business management, the Portuguese market in the legal sector is small, especially when compared to the reality in other countries, which makes it unattractive.

Do you consider that law firms in Portugal have a high level of digital maturity? 

Although it is difficult to generalise, I believe that it is not so much a question of having or not having digital maturity. Lawyers already use technology to their advantage and there is growing concern about the digitalisation of their activity and their cyber security.
What often happens is that, although they already have enough digital skills, law firms lack the financial willingness to invest either in technology or in training their staff.
Fortunately there are already some law firms in Portugal that have this availability, which, combined with the implementation of technological developments and the adoption of new working methods, also translates into a competitive advantage. We cannot forget that justice itself still has some way to go, as we have seen with the difficulties in conducting virtual trials.
These trials have revealed many of the weaknesses of both the system and the sector. 

Was there more demand for the platform during the confinement?

We found that lawyers paid more attention to this type of solution. Although we were aware of some firms that already had some tools that allowed them to work remotely, it was an excellent opportunity to give more visibility. I believe that lawyers have also realised that the use of this type of platform, which allows them to access all information at the click of a mouse, either at home or in court, is a point of no return as far as their activity is concerned.
We are aware that the 'announced crisis' could be an accelerator of cloud platform implementations, as this investment will suppress others, namely at the local IT infrastructure level. The cost savings will speak louder and louder, along with all the real benefits of this legal management system.

How do you ensure information security?

It is built on the Salesforce platform, a robust and flexible security architecture trusted by companies around the world, including those in the most regulated industries (financial, healthcare and government). Trusted by over 150,000 global companies, it provides security and control over everything from user and customer authentication through administrative permissions to the data access and sharing model.