The legal sector, traditionally characterized by its dependence on manual processes and the valorization of accumulated knowledge, will undergo an unprecedented transformation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will reconfigure the foundations of justice and is already doing so in the legal profession. The magnitude of the change is evidenced by studies that point to a “future” where collaboration between humans and machines will assume a standard pattern. Specialty reports indicate that up to 44% of legal tasks could be automated at some point. More immediately, studies from the McKinsey Global Institute suggest that approximately a quarter of the activities currently performed by lawyers can be automated using existing AI technologies. The studies do not announce the obsolescence of legal professionals, but rather the redefinition of their role, freeing them from repetitive tasks to focus on activities with greater strategic and added value, with new ethical and regulatory challenges. Initially, these tools focused on automating low-value repetitive tasks, such as document management, functioning as mere assistants. Today, however, predictive and generative capabilities are gaining prevalence over use in routine tasks. In reality, AI tools can anticipate judicial results and their generative capabilities are capable of drafting draft petitions, court decisions and drafts of complex contracts. This progression from an “assistant” to a “collaborator” who participates in analytical and creative tasks forces a fundamental reassessment of what constitutes high-value legal work. If the machine can predict outcomes and outline arguments, the intrinsic value of the lawyer and magistrate shifts, decisively, to the complex strategy, the relationship with the user of justice and, crucially, ethical supervision, skills that remain firmly in the human domain. The judiciary, often overwhelmed by a massive volume of cases, finds in AI a strategic ally to combat slowness and optimize administrative management. The application of AI in this context focuses on automating repetitive and high-volume tasks, freeing judges to dedicate themselves to activities that require human analysis and judgment. A recent initiative at the Court of Justice of Pernambuco demonstrated that an AI system was able to sort and move cases in just 15 days, a task that, if carried out manually, would take 18 months. This leap in productivity not only speeds up procedural processing, but also optimizes the allocation of human resources, directing them to where they are needed. AI tools can act as “intelligent assistants” for judges, carrying out tasks such as preparing draft decisions and orders, generating automatic summaries of voluminous procedural documents and identifying contradictions in legal texts, offering a work base that accelerates the technical stages of the judicial decision-making process. In-depth analysis of these initiatives in other countries reveals that the main driver for the adoption of AI in the judiciary is not the replacement of the judge, but rather the need to increase capacity to deal with a chronically overloaded system. However, let us not be mistaken, as the analytical capabilities of AI evolve, the question of where to draw the line between “administrative support” and “judicial reasoning” will become an imperative.
Lawyer and founding partner of ATMJ – Sociedade de Advogados