In recent years, technologies linked to locomotion, education, health, leisure, and work have found ways to leverage themselves through an aspect that has certainly been or will be on everyone’s radar at some point, Artificial Intelligence (AI).
No wonder the term “Artificial Intelligence” was chosen as the most notable term of 2023 by the Collins dictionary owing to its trending topic status throughout the year, a fact that points toward the popularity and impact of technology on society.
This technology also stood out in the legal field, as the use of features, optimizations, and applications through Artificial Intelligence has never been so significant and prevalent in the daily life of legal operators.
So much so that in the latest study carried out by the third edition of the survey “Technologies Applied to Conflict Management in the Judiciary with an emphasis on the use of artificial intelligence,” carried out by the Center for Innovation, Administration and Research of the Judiciary of FGV Conhecimento (CIAPJ-FGV), it was found that the Brazilian Judiciary Branch is already using AI to optimize the processing of more than 81 million procedures waiting their turn.
It is almost impossible to measure the myriad ways in which Artificial Intelligence is used. This immeasurable range of possibilities reflects a single predictability for the year 2024, namely that AI will be the most important area of technology in the new year.
This statement was also supported by a recent survey carried out by the Institute of Electronic Engineers and Electrical Engineers – IEEE, aiming to contemplate the technological trends of 2024, which interviewed 350 CTO’s, CIO’s, and Information Technology Officers in Brazil, USA, UK, China, and India. IEEE survey showed that 65% of respondents believe that AI will continue taking over the technology landscape in 2024.
This was a trend followed by the Brazilian courts, and other institutions related and essential to Justice.
In addition to the popular ChatGPT, already used as an application in control, management, text generation, and training systems, other AI tools are already adopted on several fronts within the segment.
As a clear example of how much this technology is disseminated in the court system, we have the Superior Court of Justice’s Athos system that screens cases solvable through qualified precedents.
Not to mention the VICTOR and RAFA robots of the Federal Supreme Court used, respectively, for the analysis of topics of general repercussion in the triage of appeals received from all over the country, and for the integration of the UN 2030 Agenda into the Supreme Court, through the classification of processes in light of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The results achieved with VICTOR are noteworthy, which, as revealed by CIAPJ-FGV study, was able to reduce the time to frame an extraordinary appeal as a theme of general repercussion, from forty-four minutes, the average time taken by a court server, to a mere five seconds.
The Supreme Court also launched a new Artificial Intelligence tool in 2023. Named Vitória, the platform is designed to expand knowledge about the profile of lawsuits received in Court, thus allowing the joint treatment of repeated or similar themes. The tool makes it possible to spot, by searching the Court’s cases, lawsuits that deal with the same subject and automatically group them. Thus, it is possible to identify, with more agility and certainty, for example, processes that are suitable for joint treatment or that may result in new themes of general repercussion.
What is more, the visibility of the use of tools for control, process management, and decisions through artificial intelligence is also impressive in law firms, mainly ensuring the optimization of internal process registration flows, customer data processing, and publication reading routines.
By 2024, considering the projection of the technology industry regarding the relevance of the theme, it is naturally expected from the court system and related entities a continuous expansion of the use of such tools, now increasingly focused on the efficiency of existing tools.
Besides the expected innovations, updates, and complements of tools, 2024 will be the year for focusing on the ability to effectively measure the time saved with new technological applications, that is, how efficient the tools already available are, both to cut costs and also to enable the use of legal practitioners on previously impossible fronts, owing to lack of time.
Even more impactful advances in the search for optimization and speed are expected, among them some artificial intelligence solutions that will allow real summaries of legal proceedings, preserving their main information and even stressing problems and contemplating cross-references of related cases, a situation that would allow an optimized and facilitated analysis by the judiciary.
This possibility of a summary of the processes has already been included in the public call made by the Federal Supreme Court, an opportunity in which about 25 prototypes of tools were received by the court, to be scrutinized for potential procurement.
For the new year that begins, an advance in the regionalized use of tools by state and federal courts is also expected. The Court of Appeals of Minas Gerais, for instance, started in 2023 a project intended to test AI for writing administrative texts, which is expected to leverage the tool for reducing both the time of operation and the value attributed to this practice.
In relation to other legal area players, such as Lawyers, estimates are for an increase in automated formatting and development of argumentative texts based on the analysis of preliminary data, mainly in the preparation of various procedural statements in mass demands.
Besides, AI will be used in the predictive analysis of lawsuit results. A practice that allows the significant reduction of the procedural treatment time of law firms, and tends to cut costs in decision making.
In turn, the need to care for the proper and balanced use of technology is a matter of course for the judiciary and entities gravitating towards justice in the coming years.
A while ago, the National Council of Justice – CNJ had already issued resolution 332/2020 determining that the Judiciary bodies should inform the council in advance of any research, development, implementation or use of technologies and/or tools that use artificial intelligence.
This resolution established important initial guidelines to ensure ethics and transparency in the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Judiciary. Nonetheless, with the modifications and updates planned, as well as those not yet even imagined, the judiciary’s quest to keep up to date not only with the tools, but how to use them without compromising its own purpose should be in the horizon for the future.
It is certain that from the perspective of the Law and all those involved, it is evident that a hybrid management, that is, a balanced conduct capable of ensuring robotic and human collaboration while safeguarding final human decision, and guaranteeing time and quality gain, tends to be efficient, especially to ensure compliance with principles such as speed and access to justice, thus benefiting the Brazilian society at large.
Avaliable at: https://www.estadao.com.br/politica/blog-do-fausto-macedo/inteligencia-artificial-no-campo-juridico-eficiencia-das-maquinas-expectativas-para-2024/
Autor: Lucas Rodrigues Lucas • email: lucas.lucas@ernestoborges.com.br
