‍Brazil processes an extraordinary number of lawsuits each year. Why is scale of litigation an issue for legal departments?

Brazil has one of the highest volumes of judicial cases in the world, with an estimated backlog of around 80 million. The legal environment in Brazil is highly litigious, and procedural rules allow for a virtually unlimited number of appeals. For a large company like JBS, this means responding to potentially thousands of new cases every month—each with strict deadlines.

JBS operates across the entire country and therefore faces litigation in all regions. For years, one of the main challenges our legal department faced was that summons and notifications of new lawsuits were available only in physical form. This decentralised receipt of court documents often led to important notifications being shelved or misplaced. In the worst cases, we only learned about lawsuits from the media. Such lapses can cause serious issues—most notably, missing deadlines, which may result in default judgments and substantial fines.

‍How Brazil’s Digital Justice System Helps

Brazil introduced a digital court system back in 2011—well ahead of many other jurisdictions. What changed for companies once the litigation process went fully digital? 

Indeed, Brazil is considered one of the pioneers in digitizing its justice system—a move largely driven by the need to manage the exceptionally high volume of cases.

One of the key achievements is the Electronic Judicial Process (PJe), developed by the National Council of Justice (CNJ). PJe not only brought court processes online but also established a single national platform for the electronic filing and tracking of court documents.

PJe benefits not just the judiciary in managing caseloads, but also enables companies like ours to monitor litigation activity nationwide. Our automated monitoring tools scan the system each night for new lawsuits involving our group companies, triggering alerts in real-time. This gives our legal team more time to prepare and respond, helping us reduce errors and avoid penalties.

Because everything is digital, we also gain access to valuable metadata such as timestamps and outcomes. This data enhances our AI tools’ ability to make predictions—for example, estimating the likely duration of a case or assessing our chances of success. Such automated data collection and assessment would be far more difficult without a centralised and digital system for court records.

Automatic On-boarding of Cases

Your team also developed a system that automatically registers new cases once they are identified as involving group companies. How does that process work in practice?

Once our monitoring tools detect new lawsuits mentioning any of our group companies on the court website, they automatically download the initial petition. An AI algorithm then reviews the document and extracts key information such as the court name, case number, and type of claim.

The system uses this data to generate a case record on our internal platform, pre-filling the relevant fields and attaching the petition. A member of our legal operations team then verifies the information through a dashboard that also displays the AI's confidence level for each field.

This automation significantly reduces administrative effort and enables our lawyers to focus on building a defense strategy from the outset.

‍Tracking Ongoing Cases

On-boarding a new case is one thing. How do you track cases?‍

Given the high volume of cases and the variety of communication channels used by courts, we developed a proactive monitoring system to track procedural developments in real time using Robotic Process Automation (RPA). These are “push” monitoring robots,¹ designed to detect case updates even before they are officially published in the court gazettes.

The robots operate by logging into the courts’ digital platforms and recording any case movements as they happen. When a relevant change is detected, the system immediately sends alerts to the responsible lawyers.

This approach improves time management, enhances the quality of our legal responses, and helps ensure deadlines are consistently met with greater accuracy and confidence.

Transcripts for Hearings

Attending physical hearings adds another layer of complexity. How does your team ensure that no court appointments are missed?

That is indeed a challenge. To give some perspective, Brazil has 1,587 labor courts. For a company like JBS, with nationwide operations and thousands of employees, our legal team is required to attend hearings across the entire country on a regular basis. To ensure the right person is present at each hearing, we rely on two key tools:

• The first tool is a set of automated bots that scan court dockets every hour. When a new hearing is scheduled, the system detects that almost immediately—often before the official notice is published. This gives us a crucial head start in planning.
• The second is our internal Hearings App, which displays all upcoming hearings for the next 20 days. The app allows our in-house team and external counsel to prepare and coordinate in advance. On the day of the hearing, the assigned lawyer must check in one hour beforehand using their phone’s GPS. They are required to be within 200 metres of the courthouse. If the check-in does not happen within the allowed range, an alert is sent to a manager, who can then assign a backup lawyer to attend.

Since implementing these systems, we have virtually eliminated missed hearings.

AI to Identify Cold Cases and Clean Up the Books

‍You also introduced an AI solution to help with analyzing hearing transcripts and identifying cases that could potentially be dismissed. What results have you seen so far? 

We now record many hearings by phone or video, and use an AI tool to generate written transcripts. The system separates speakers and timestamps each segment,making it much easier to locate key moments—for example, when damages were discussed. Previously, our lawyers had to listen to entire recordings, which was time-consuming.

This tool also benefits the courts. It allows them to pinpoint exactly when specific issues were addressed during a hearing, supporting faster and more objective judicial analysis.

In a separate project, we developed a robot to monitor the current status of each case. One challenge we faced was that our internal database was not always in sync with the official court docket. The robot uses AI to assess whether a case might be eligible for dismissal—for example, if it has been inactive for an extended period. It flags these cases for our legal team to review. This not only helps us close dormant files more efficiently but also frees up budget by allowing us to release provisions from our financial books.

Avoiding the White Elephant Trap

Implementing a legal technology solution is just the beginning. How do you ensure that these tools are used consistently, remain reliable, and stay up to date over time?‍

There are several key components to ensuring our legal technology solutions remain relevant:

• First, we have a strong governance structure in place. This ensures that new tools are properly reviewed and approved before deployment, and that user feedback flows back into the development cycle. Clear two-way communication is essential for continuous improvement.
• Second, we invest in ongoing training for our legal team. This ensures that staff are not only technically proficient but also regularly reminded of the value these tools bring. It reinforces the understanding that effective use of technology is directly linked to the success of both the legal department and the company as a whole.

That said, no company can do this in isolation. It takes two hands to clap. A justice system that supports and invests in digital infrastructure is crucial. When companies engage with the courts’ digital platforms, it strengthens the case for continued public investment in those systems. We are fortunate to have that kind of ecosystem in Brazil today.

Adriano Claudio Pires Ribeiro (General Counsel), Aruã Monteiro Parrales (Legal Operations Manager), and Ruan Pablo Dalabrida (Senior Counsel) form part of the legal leadership team at JBS.