The story behind SPS dates back to the early 1990s when, having completed our internship and already with professional experience as interns, we decided the open our own law firm.

At the time, we were driven by the desire to be independent and the ambition to practice law differently, in a more modern way and based on an organisational model capable of meeting the needs of the business community which wasn’t rooted in the more conservative form of law which was proving to be completely incapable of understanding that clients increasingly demanded pragmatic solutions, results, and, at the same time, a high cost/benefit ratio in the services they engaged.

Some of our first clients, Financial Institutions, Insurers and multinational companies, who believed in us from the start, are still today, and more than twenty-five years later, SPS clients.

Starting out with just 5 lawyers and an office in down town Lisbon, SPS grew both in number of lawyers and clients.

In 1995, the firm moved from Av. da República to a new office space with approximately 200m2 where it stayed until 2004, when it was moved to our current location, the firm having over 80 lawyers and occupying approximately 1000m2.

Investment in technology has always been a primary concern. We were the first to adopt a computer network with shared printers and, in 1991, we designed a computer application to manage litigation proceedings. We were also the first law firm to offer its clients remote online access to the content of the respective management databases.

We were also innovative in the introduction of e-mail addresses, in creating a specific career plan for lawyers (in 2003), and we adopted a monogram and logo early on that would reflect that more than the name of the partners who at a given moment founded and/or joined it, what is important is the firm and what it represents as the collective effort of all of those who are a part of it.

Today, we continue to invest in IT tools tailor-made to the specific needs of each client, product and segment.

In has been almost 30 years since we opened our doors and a lot has changed in the Country, in the world and in law. Today, our law firm is a benchmark in the domestic market that has been able to grow independently over the years and today has 9 partners who, for the most part, followed our internal career plan, from intern to partner.

We hope we will continue to grow in the coming years in a world where technological development increasingly challenges the way law firms meet the needs of its clients. We participated in Web Summit, with clients and partners, driven by the desire to understand and anticipate the future of law.

Lisbon, November 2016

Pedro Malta da Silveira / Manuel Gibert Prates