How many tabs are open right now in your browser?
I always take a look at my friends 😬' notebooks to see how many tabs are open in the browser. It is very common for there to be several tabs, each with a working web application.
If you identify with this and are resistant to living in chaos, that's okay . But if you want to have a little more focus and routine in your work, I'll give you some suggestions to overcome the proliferation of tabs in your internet browser.
Toby: the bookmark manager ↑
Free for personal use. Paid for teams.
The first alternative to beat tabs is to use the browser's bookmarks tab. But soon it will be crowded and you will only change problems. As far as I've researched, there isn't a native browser with a good solution for managing bookmarks. That's where the Toby .
The app (actually a Chrome extension) transforms the native behavior of the browser button that, by default, opened a new tab. With Toby installed, this button opens a kind of desktop in the browser, where all your favorites will be. In summary, it is this: Toby turns the bookmarks bar into a bookmarks workspace .
Since Toby isn't a new browser, its experience is more familiar. In addition, precisely because you use the same browser you are already used to, the address bar will always be visible - which can even be a disadvantage. After all, half of the magic of the following apps is precisely in hiding the address bar, reminding us that we are, most of the time, in real apps, and not mere web pages.
I've used the app more, but I still have my bank account shortcuts registered with Toby. It may sound like superstition, but I prefer to keep sensitive sites running natively in Chrome, using Toby as my bookmark manager.
Franz: messaging app ↑
Quite satisfying. Paid version available.
While managing tabs and bookmarks is a generic problem, there may be a specific cause for it. If your proliferation of tabs stems from the management of messaging apps, the Franz is the solution . You'll have all your messaging apps, including email, in one environment, which might solve your situation.
I use Franz at least weekly or when I need to search for an email in one of my Gmail accounts. I also use Franz to check other email accounts, Slack accounts that I follow less often, as well as Discord accounts. In other words, Franz is my go-to solution for messages, especially those that I don't want to receive notifications about right away.
Station: one app for everyone else ↑
Free for personal use. In the future, it will be paid to teams.
While Franz is focused on messaging apps, Station It caters to the most popular applications of all kinds. Station is in full development and recently the functionality that allows the creation of applications that are not yet listed was included.
I always use Station every day and I am very satisfied. It really is a must-have app for me . I wouldn't trade Station for anything.
Manageyum: Paid and Simpler Option ↑
Paid app with trial.
Manageyum it is an option only if you are willing to pay USD 47. But I find this difficult to convince, since the free version of Rambox does practically the same thing, with a little less elegance.
It is worth noting that, while the competition focuses on enabling multiple logins in several simultaneous applications, Manageuym also allows you to run multiple instances of the same application . This seems to be a real differential.
What it seems to me is that, in any case, the price is disproportionate to the product that is supplied. This perception is confirmed by the comments on the Product Hunt page. The same page also reveals that the current version of the software is already two years old, while competitors are moving quite fast, perhaps because they have more funding and staff.
Personally, since I paid for the software, I ended up leaving some very specific applications installed on it, services in which I manage multiple accounts without having to enter the password again at each appointment. I also keep my YouTube there, because curiously, it doesn't work well in the other apps I use. But this certainly does not justify the investment.
Rambox: paid and more robust option ↑
Paid app with a 30-day trial. Free version available, but limited.
Or Rambox It's the most mature option I've come across, as it has almost everything you can dream up for organizing your desktop. But this comes at a price: USD 4/month. Although there is a free version, it doesn't even resemble the paid version. If you don't intend to pay for the app, there's no point in starting to use the free version, as it is incompatible with the paid version. There is no migration between them.
Although it is the most complete application in the category, in my view, it still lacks some features, for example, reordering them in the vertical bar. From what I tested, once you create a group, you have no way to drag to change the order. Also, I didn't find an option to remove an app from the group, as well as make it appear in two groups.
I also noticed that Rambox is very faithful, in an exaggerated way, to the philosophy of the operation of an isolated application, failing to allow the opening of any link as a new tab. I think it's about a flexibility that a paid app (even more so as a subscription) needs to offer. In this regard, Station, which is free, seems to have a much better executed functionality.
I ended up not using Rambox to the point of having a definitive opinion about it, having only performed tests.
Shift: Rambox challenger ↑
Paid app, the most expensive of all. Free version available, but limited.
I still don't have a definitive opinion on the Shift , but it seems to me a more expensive Rambox option. Another impression is that it positions itself as a solution for managing several Gmail accounts, although it is much more than that. In any case, it prioritizes the development of features for Gmail, for example, an integrated search of all your email boxes with one click.
If you subscribe to such a service for $99.99/year, that's okay. For me, unfortunately, it's a problem. There is also a cheaper option, for USD 29.99/year, but it does not have all the features. In the same vein as the limitation of features, the free version is nothing more than a demo, which does not offer any conditions to test the application.
I don't recommend this app, although I recognize its quality. I simply think it's more expensive than it should be .
Firework: clone your launchpad ↑
Paid app. Free version available quite functional.
Firework It's a small launchpad for your web apps, with a pretty satisfying free version. As far as I could tell, the only missing features are: renaming the apps and allowing them to open in a new window. In the free version, Firework limits simultaneous access to two applications, but I don't think that's a problem. Just like Manageyum, in Firework it is possible to run more than one instance of the same application simultaneously .
It is a solution that really emulates the operation of a dedicated launchpad, quite functional and intuitive. For comparison, while Manageyum is a tabbed window (resembling a browser), Firework is a desktop with applications (exactly built like a launchpad). As a consequence, Manageyum will struggle to accommodate a large volume of applications, while Firework's approach is more scalable. So, point to Firework.
I also think Firework gets it right by having a minimalist browser, with the option to hide the navigation bar, which seems to me to be exclusive to it. This is a very interesting and little-known solution. The paid version is (theoretically) only available through a Russian payment mechanism, priced at approximately USD 15/year.
Although I tried to make the purchase, I was unable to complete the transaction with any of my credit cards. Firework is a curious app: I like it, but I don't use it much, especially since I've experienced compatibility issues with Airtable and YouTube.
Conclusion ↑
With the proliferation of great solutions being our own applications, our desktops have become a real mess. The browser has become the desktop of the computer and the most popular browsers have not kept up with this evolution. But there are already great solutions to this problem and, every day, there are many others.
In this scenario, you will find applications that are still in the early development phase. Some recognize this and do not charge for now, others charge anyway. Be smart and stick with one of the honest solutions I've listed.
Let's go to them: for favorites, Toby; for messages, Franz; for popular apps, Station . And if you demand the installation of lesser-used apps, in addition to being demanding enough to pay, you can choose between Manageyum (tab-centric browser, USD 47), Rambox (tab-centric browser, USD 4/month) and Firework (full launchpad, USD 15/year).
The problem of revision ↑
It's been a year since I published the first version of this post. Since then, a lot has changed and I decided to make a compilation of my findings and current anxieties.
From the beginning of this journey, my goal was to be more productive in writing, especially when this process required a routine of collaboration at work - both for mere revision and for co-authorship.
In this context, the first objective was to avoid exchanging Word files by email, which is certainly an unproductive process. In the end, most of the time, I couldn't convince my writing partners to change this dynamic, which is understandable, since Word and email are tools that everyone has used since they were born.
I confirmed that, if it is difficult to change a habit of ours, changing a habit of others is practically impossible.
That's why I was content to transform only my writing process, which turned out to be good for my personal productivity. Proof of this is that I am publishing this post, which might not have happened, if I still wrote with the usual tools.
The problem of synchrony ↑
From the beginning, I also wanted to avoid the risks of leaving shared files in Dropbox (a natural alternative to email), as we know that only the latest version of the file is saved. Now, anything can happen in a shared folder, and everything can be lost from one moment to the next. Thus, replacing email with Dropbox did not seem to me a desirable solution.
Looking better, I found several ways to get around these problems, and tools for this can be organized into the following groups: editors for writing, editors with revision marks or versioning, and editors with comments. But the truth is that any solution, by prioritizing one approach, sacrifices the others.
The problem becomes, therefore, to know which dimension is more important to you: the writing itself, the record of the evolution of writing or the conversations that are collateral to the text. What is the real bottleneck of your writing? If you answered that the last alternative is the most (or at least quite) important, this text may be of interest to you.
The most overlooked approach ↑
In general, I consider that the perspective most neglected by editors is the one oriented to comments. The comments are not intended to merge with the text, but to provide a new layer of information, perhaps inaugurating a new discussion. That's why it's really hard to find a good text editor that pays enough attention to comments and their way of being.
A good example of a platform that moves in the latter direction is the Medium . The platform promotes the comment to practically a new fragment of text, starting infinite conversations (threads) of the same hierarchy in front of the originally published text. It wasn't always like this and Medium has already had another approach, when it had a kind of inline comment, displayed next to the text. Today Medium displays the comments stacked at the end of the text.
But, first of all, Medium is a publishing tool, not a web text editor per se . I don't recommend in any way that Medium be used as a solution for your writing productivity, because it really isn't good for that. In any case, Medium is a good source of inspiration for us to think about how the debate around and through texts can occur.
Returning to the subject, if you prefer comments next to the text, one possibility - and my old choice - would be the Hypothesis . I have always considered Hypothesis to be a better solution than its commercial competitors, such as Genius or Diigo. The latter seems to have a more closed profile and focused on education, a spectrum in which Perusall and Kami are also found. Hypothesis's ambitious presentation identifies it as A new layer on the Internet .
In fact, the problem that Hypothesis aims to solve is to make the internet noteworthy. To do so, your solution keeps annotation links intact, even in an environment where annotated text evolves. As I said, other products have tried to solve the same problem. None of them, however, seem to be as good as Hypothesis himself in this mission.
In addition, Hypothesis can be installed inside your own website or blog, which is not possible with other tools. Finally, it is open source and, naturally, has a vocation for integration with other systems. But, although it is an inspiring software, I believe that Hypothesis is not a good solution for productivity of your writing, nor mine.
In this field, more recently, in my view, the Coda has been evolving unbeatably. Really Coda is on a whole different level And, among other features, it has a great commenting tool:
In other words, the initial difference is that, conceptually, Hypothesis is a tool to comment on any page on the internet, while Coda is an application with a great commenting tool. They are completely different missions and, therefore, more than solving your writing problem, they serve to outline what are the existing solutions in the face of problems related to the theme of reading and writing in the digital age.
Reducing barriers for the reviewer ↑
The power of annotation lies in the fact that - there must be - a minimal barrier for the proofreader to collaborate with your text. With this, you are more likely to be able to count on that person who would not be available to collaborate within a co-authoring platform, for example.
We cannot fail to consider that, In the end, what matters is the quality of the text . Thus, it is important that the tools are aligned with this purpose.
For this purpose, we don't always need a sophisticated platform with version control (i.e., the text and its changes), which is something that is not fully mastered by most reviewers. In contrast, annotation tools are almost always within the reach of a minimally available person and can give much more return to the advancement of your text.
We cannot fail to consider the power of annotation . The annotation tools are simple and, in fact, work, mainly because they respect the time and comfort of the reviewer. After all, there is no one who writes well. There are those who dedicate themselves to revising the text and creating conditions for it to reach new levels of quality, which will be much easier through collaboration with different and more experienced people.
Conclusion: the tool is not the most important thing ↑
People write texts and this is not a simple task. That is why it is important that writing and proofreading tools have the authors (not the readers) as recipients, respecting their way of working.
Almost never are the barriers to writing visible, until they are discovered. In this scenario, the more comfortable the writing process, the more productive the author will be. And this applies, with much more emphasis, to the task of the reviewer.
Well, if you are fortunate enough to have a good proofreader, I recommend that you take advantage and work with a program that is in his domain. This fact is more important than the choice of any tool, especially if you have the chance to discuss your text in person.
What I expected with this post, in addition to praising the role of the proofreader and the collateral conversations to the text, was only to contextualize some tools aimed at collaborative writing.
Although none of the programs mentioned are the definitive solution to the problem of collaborative writing, they serve to expand your list of references and help you choose the essential tools for the workflow you will build. Happy writing!
If you are a professor or intend to organize your own legal studies based on objective questions, there are basically two options. You can use some question platform (such as Qconcursos or Other competitors ) or you can follow an already prepared workbook, usually a printed or pdf material prepared by a course you attend.
In my view, the advantages offered by question platforms are very significant. After all, depending on the plan you subscribe to, it will be possible to set up mock exams, consult teacher comments, search based on filters, etc. And this is especially important if you are in a competitive environment, as is the case with preparation for public exams.
Aware of these advantages, I decided to strive to offer my students the possibility of preparing for the test (mine or other legal tests) with the help of these tools. Anyway Question platforms are an inexhaustible source of free content and they just needed to be adapted for my purpose.
The first step is naturally to copy and paste the questions from the platform of your choice, organizing this collection in some way.
The problem is that it is not enough to have the question bank. I also needed to have an environment in which I could take notes and plan the preparation of the tests. In addition, I needed a search tool to easily retrieve a question and the notes on the template. In other words, it was necessary to create a knowledge base. After trying several solutions, I ended up adopting the app Bear .
While the app is advertised as a generic tool built for the user to take notes (right column), ordered by a list (central column) and organized around tags (left column), my use had the following goal: to label each alternative of the questions so that I would be able to know exactly which articles of law would be charged in the entire test. My Bear was organized like this:
The best part about this organization is that it makes it possible to expand, in a tree format, the entire list of cited articles. Thus, I am sure that I am covering the content well, both in the correct and incorrect alternatives.
In summary, as a law professor, I chose to organize objective tests for students of all the subjects I teach. I think it's a very fair way to evaluate students, especially in subjects with dogmatic content. On this journey, I realized that the stage of organizing the questions was a critical phase for my planning.
I also discovered that there are a number of tools (for example, the note editors in the style Zettelkasten ) that help solve this problem. The one that most adapted to my way of working was the organization around tags, which is precisely the vocation of the Bear app. By the way, all the features I use are covered by the app's free plan.
Finally, even if you don't have the same demand as mine, I think it's worth trying, because creating the habit of taking notes in an organized way helps solve a series of other typical problems of those who work with the organization of information and the writing of texts.
PS1: Bear is a note-taking app for Mac, designed around an advanced nested tagging tool ( nested tags ). Although it seems simple, it is a very complex and unique solution, which allows you to create a hierarchical navigation on the subjects of your interest.
Unfortunately, because this is a Bear-only approach, the Windows user will need to find their own way of organizing it within the other available options: OneNote , Evernote , Boostnote , and so on . None of them have nested labeling.
PS2: New post on how to correct objective tests by cell phone.
Text presented at the VIII International Congress of Labor Law, held in October 2018.
Rephrasing the question
Honestly, I don't know how to answer the question that was proposed to me: "What skills will the worker of the future have (or need to have)?"
In any case, it is a question that intrigues me and, therefore, I would like to at least answer a related question, but less comprehensive. So I will take the liberty of reformulating the problem, facing the subject within what seems pertinent and possible to be answered: What are the skills that the jurist of the future will have (or will need to have)?
This is a little confused with an exposition of what I have been doing academically and what is happening in the world as a whole, so to speak, of the legal industry. I know that this name is not ideal, but at least it seems faithful to the fact that Law exists as a field of culture, at the same time that it exists as a branch of professional activities. After all, it is with the practice of Law that the jurist earns his living.
In my view, as professors, we put a lot of energy into introducing bachelor's students to the world of legal knowledge, but we practically ignore that the undergraduate student also needs to think about how he will exercise his professional activity.
Aware of this fact, Harvard professors organized the Center on the Legal Profession , whose mission is stated as follows: to provide a richer understanding of the rapid changes that are taking place globally in the legal professions. Although this center offers a very rich reflection on globalized advocacy, this trait is also limiting, given that it proposes to evaluate precisely the advocacy that serves global companies.
In view of this, the future of local law - as a market totally different from the globalized one - demands its own reflection. And, in the same way, all legal professions that do not fall within the legal profession need to be observed from other points of view.
Brazilian history since the first colleges
With the invasion of Portugal by the French in 1808, the Portuguese court was transferred to Brazil. As a result, there were a series of local evolutions, for example, the opening of ports, the construction of factories and the foundation of Banco do Brasil.
In 1822, Brazil became independent, which stimulated the creation of two law courses in 1827, so that the elite residing in the country would be able to study without returning to Europe. In this scenario, it is possible to imagine that the legal professions have been quite different from what we have today, basically organizing themselves around the mission of structuring a young independent country. Thus, the first law schools were responsible for providing the elite that would occupy the political and administrative positions in Brazil.
It was only around 1930, with the growing process of industrialization, that the organization of business law began. Until then, matters related to property, family and succession were the most important for legal practice. With the Second World War, the growth of the industry was even more accelerated, demanding the legal organization of banking, contractual, export affairs, among others.
Another relevant aspect is that, also during the Vargas Era, there was a growth in the role of the State, creating demand for the evolution of public law, especially administrative law. However, even in the face of the demand for a more specialized technical performance of legal professionals, this has not overshadowed the presence of legal training as one of the essential characteristics of Brazilian politicians.
Only after 1964, with the establishment of the Military Regime, the scenario would change. Although civil liberties and human rights have been neglected in the period, some more technical legal branches have undergone considerable evolution. Milestones of the period are the creation of the Central Bank, the National Monetary Council, as well as developments in the fields of tax and corporate law.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, the number of Brazilian lawyers who complemented their training in the United States increased. And, in the 90s, with the advance of globalization, this type of service became even more demanded. Such demand occurred on two fronts, both by the expansion of the operations of Brazilian companies abroad, and by the arrival of foreign investments, especially as a result of privatizations and new concessions in progress.
From that moment on, the Brazilian legal market began to have a truly organized workforce oriented to meet the demand of a globalized economy.
But this part of the Brazilian legal profession has always been a minority, given that, at the same time, the offer of vacancies in law courses has grown enormously. And most of these professionals would come to provide services in an internal dynamic that has nothing to do with globalization and that is often a resistance to the advancement of their culture.
Especially in the last decade, when some foreign firms arrived in Brazil (e.g., Mayer & Brown and DLA Piper) faced strong resistance. The biggest opponent of the foreign onslaught is the Center for the Study of Law Firms (Cesa), which includes large Brazilian law firms. The OAB's response to Cesa's demand, although it did not end the operational partnerships between the aforementioned foreign firms and their respective Brazilian partners, led to the end of the duo Lefosse and Linklaters, a British firm with activities in Brazil since 2001.
There is, therefore, a tension that has not completely dissipated between foreign firms and local law firms. Each strand represents a culture and demands professionals with different profiles. This is one of the reasons why we cannot think about the future of the legal professions in Brazil only based on findings and reflections promoted by foreign study centers.
Skills for those who are already in the market
A large firm, for example, with more than a hundred lawyers, is marked by two characteristics: the first is that its competitive advantage consists in keeping its client sheltered in all their needs; the second, closely related to the first, consists of each lawyer acting according to his specialization. There is, therefore, a relevant degree of impersonality in the dealing.
Because of these characteristics, a lawyer from a big law firm must respond to the firm's culture and their progress is relatively predictable within the organization, based on the agenda of these values. Nowadays, large firms try to convey an image of innovation, not just tradition. This is due to the fact that the form of organization of big law is facing enormous threats worldwide.
While it is understandable that large firms do not demonstrate their vulnerability publicly, it is easy to verify their existence from a line of research by the Center on the Legal Profession of Harvad , called " The reemergence of the Big Four in Law ”. This means that large accounting firms, which are much larger and more efficient than any law firm, are aggressively advancing on the market.
In view of this, in my view, the competencies of a future partner of a large law firm need to include: knowledge about the current business model of law; knowledge about alternative business models; and knowledge about how to integrate legal services with support services.
I think that no technological competence is relevant to appear as a lawyer in this market, given that the great threat derives from a business issue.
The business model of international law firms is under threat and, in my opinion, the partners who know how to promote the defense of their organizations will be rewarded.
In contrast, for the national market and for smaller firms, I believe that the jurists of the future need to invest in another list of skills. Since its market is not exactly threatened by the big accounting firms, there is no risk of maximum magnitude against it.
However, this type of law will need to deal with adversities: the potential increase in legal technologists, which tends to reduce margins in lower value-added services; and the increase in local competition, given that electronic process platforms will allow national competition in any litigation market.
As a consequence, smaller law firms will tend to operate in increasingly determined niches, but without territorial limitations. So, in my view, the future belongs to the specialist. I suppose that the generalist will also lose space due to the maturation of the platforms that should serve information about the quality and reputation of each firm, so that the specialist can be more easily found.
Everything leads us to believe that the cost of finding a good lawyer at a fair price will be reduced through virtual platforms that will promote the balance between supply and demand for such services.
I suppose that small offices will gain from this, as they will be more efficient in providing the work directly, without facing the large costs of maintaining a luxurious office or one aimed at maintaining business relationships based on appearances.
Finally, as for the public sector, there is an even more different dynamic. I suppose that the public service will go through times of budget restriction, which will demand greater productivity from the manager. From the point of view of the boss, more productivity will require learning about team management in an agile and results-oriented way. After all, the public manager will need to do more with less. This demand seems to have intensified in recent months.
Still regarding the public environment, from the point of view of the subordinate public servant, complementary skills to those of the head will be valued, for example, the ability to set up a low-cost computer system from services provided via the cloud. This would not require the ability to write in computer language, but it would certainly require a more analytical mind than the one traditionally oriented by verbal and communication skills.
I imagine that the era of valuing eloquence and the ability to express itself has reached a point where such virtues will compete with other desirable skills. Under this approach, the traditional qualities of a jurist will become less valuable. Above all, memorized and unreflective knowledge will have less value than it already has today, because information retrieval systems tend to be improved.
While the private sector naturally has more agility to adapt and modify the profile of its workforce, the public tender has a rigid and legally imposed format. Thus, the government tends to maintain an outdated format for selecting civil servants, and it is desirable that it invests in solutions to improve the skills of its workforce already in activity.
Skills for those who are yet to enter the market
The Ministry of Education recently published, through Resolution 05/18, new National Curriculum Guidelines for the Law course. Among the novelties are the concern with the strengthening of consensual forms of conflict settlement. In addition, the MEC understands that it is desirable that graduates of the Bachelor of Law degree be able to work in an environment of diversity and cultural pluralism, developing the ability to work in groups and in an interdisciplinary context.
From a technological point of view, the MEC established that the Law course should enable the formation of skills so that the bachelor understands the impact of new technologies in the legal area. I think it was right for the MEC not to list what these technologies would be, because the scope of the Curricular Guidelines is really to generically guide the elaboration of the Pedagogical Project of the Course.
With regard to younger people, whose training will take place under the current Curriculum Guidelines, the impact of innovation will be even greater on their careers. The recognition, on the part of the MEC, that technology will play a leading role in the legal professions appears, in my view, as a conservative diagnosis.
With a bolder stance, Richard Susskind (Susskind, 2017) proposes a series of new activities, which would be performed by new lawyers, in a future in which they should be endowed with less professional prestige. They are: legal advice performed by lawyers in extremely specialized cases, in which the professional has a strong relationship of trust with the client; as well as technological support activities for this consultancy.
In addition, Susskind maintains that new professions will be created, summarized here in free translation.
The Legal Knowledge Engineers It would be the lawyers responsible for analyzing and parameterizing the language and legal concepts so that they can be incorporated into computer programs. Already the Legal Technology Engineers would be a profession that until today has been performed by people from one of these two areas: Law or Technology. Its mission would be to enable the consumption of legal services independently of the mediation of a lawyer.
They would also come into existence Hybrid Lawyers , also versed in two areas of knowledge, whose mission would be, for example, to create a negotiation strategy or act as psychologists. The author recognizes that, in some way, this practice already exists, but what he proposes is that the lawyer does not only have a notion of the area of knowledge in a secondary way, showing solid training on equal terms with his legal knowledge.
A variation of these professionals would be the Legal Data Scientists . They would need to have a strong background in mathematics, statistics, and programming. In other words, such a description is not that of a lawyer who operates ready-made computer systems, because, for the performance of this activity, it is necessary to capture, analyze and manipulate large amounts of data with great technical resourcefulness.
Just as today the electronics and pharmaceutical industries have innovation laboratories, Susskind points out that there should be Research and Development Professionals in Law. They would be responsible for designing services and solutions based on experimental techniques, acting with much more freedom than the professionals allocated to the operational part of offices and companies linked to the legal area.
Susskind also mentions that another profession would be that of Legal Project Analysts . Such analysts would not be confused with mere operators of ready-made systems, their practice consisting of the decomposition of tasks to be distributed to various suppliers. Its function would be to disaggregate the tasks of a project, outsourcing the execution, whose management would be in charge of another type of professional, the Legal Project Manager .
Just as accounting giants have built a consulting business out of their initial auditing businesses, Susskind believes that law firms should evolve in a similar direction, creating the conditions for the establishment of auditing services. Legal Management Consultants .
Although, for example, team management and instruction activities already exist within legal departments, they are usually provided in a non-specialized manner. Other services that would be covered by this professional performance include: value chain analysis, organizational structuring, recruitment of professionals, information management, etc.
There is also a very specific part of this type of service, concerning the identification, quantification, monitoring and prevention of risks. This would be the field of action of the Legal Risk Analysts . His role would be to assist the Legal Directors, on a front in which there is a huge deficit of professionals.
Finally, apart from services provided by online platforms, the author points out that there should be the Online Mediators .
Conclusion
In a scenario of so much uncertainty and lack of analysis about the particularities of the legal professions market in Brazil, it is really very difficult to know what are the competencies of the jurist of the future.
In view of this, regardless of the moment of the interested party's career, the most prudent thing seems to be to get deeply involved with the labor market in the state in which it is. From the understanding of their current state and their weaknesses, each one will be able to organize themselves to take advantage of the opportunities that will present themselves.
Without getting involved with the real market, opportunities cannot even be perceived as real opportunities, because everything would be in the field of conjecture. So being aware of the changes is the best recommendation I could give, at least the most honest.
It is true that, for those more focused on technology, it may be convenient to seek formal instruction in some field of exact sciences. In contrast, for people with more commercial and relationship skills, it is advisable to remain attentive to the changes related to the business model of providing legal services.
However, the most interested in the answer to this text seems to be the student who has not yet found himself in any of these extremes. It is most likely that a good Brazilian Law School is oriented to transform its graduates into people capable of performing an activity of judicial representation, through personal service, working passively according to the cause that the client may present to him. In other words, this is the traditional definition of a lawyer.
On the other hand, Educational Institutions seem to invest little in the development of skills aimed at teamwork, as well as in the hybrid instruction of a legal and also technological profile, strongly oriented to meet market demands and aimed at working according to the needs of the corporate world.
I imagine that the student's effort to fill such gaps in his education will be rewarding, if the premises assumed in this text are confirmed. Well, at least that's my reflection for today.
Bibliography
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At last British Legal Technology Forum , held in London this week, several issues related to artificial intelligence applied to law were discussed. The blog Artificial Lawyer was there and published an interesting reflection on a new wave of opinions about artificial intelligence, which he called "Post-Hype AI Hype".
For those who are not familiar, Hype is something exaggerated and with a negative connotation . Any subject that is giving something to talk about, that is fashionable, but that at the same time has no proven foundation, is hyped. In the context of technology, something that is in hype brings with it a great fear that the current state of technology is not enough to solve the problems it proposes to face.
The current movement, diagnosed this week, maintains that the cycle of exacerbated expectations about The potential of artificial intelligence is coming to an end . Instead of discussing a distant future, this movement aims to reflect on practical and immediate applications, which generally require technologies that are already established. In other words, a new cycle has formed in the sector against artificial intelligence - but it is also a kind of hype.
Basically, We now have a new hype taking the place of the other . None of them were deliberately created, because they were composed of a sum of voices that really believed in what they promised as a solution to all problems. Today, retreaded, the hype is organized to avoid the terminology celebrated until then, but this is not something that comes without any difficulty. After all, albeit imprecisely, artificial intelligence is already a term incorporated into the current vocabulary. In any case, this has made communication possible so far.
Debating related issues talking about machine learning, natural language processing, automatic decision classification, among other terms, is something that would require much more energy. This is certainly not in the interest of companies that use jargon only as marketing, with no commitment to embedding the technology they advertise in their products.
It seems that the term artificial intelligence has lost its freshness . At the same time - and not by chance - some of its promises were simply not fulfilled for the legal market. We are experiencing a hangover similar to the one that medicine recently passed, as artificial intelligence has not discovered the "cure for cancer". And we still don't have the "cure for the processes".
From cycle to cycle, hype reveals itself as the very way of being of professional communities with limited control over what should be discussed and understood in depth. Once installed, it does not dissolve easily, being succeeded by a new promise that will not be fulfilled either. This chain of promises and frustrations is typical of sectors that consume technology, without having the tools to fully understand it.
Like this The hype is a consequence of our own lack of technical mastery , of our consequent superficiality in this field. Additional ingredients are the interest of people to feed the hype, for example, a lecturer who reaffirms their supposed knowledge or companies that sell the hype, as they work in the logic of immediate and facilitated communication.
The final elements are the words intelligence and artificial, which convey a very equivocal sense of what they really are when used together. It would be better if this technology did not have its content induced by words that we think we understand, because they are part of our language in other contexts.
Although a lawyer fully understands the legal challenges of his daily work, he would hardly understand everything that technologically surrounds the products available in his market. If he were told that the solution to his problems would be to use artificial intelligence, he would most likely be misled. After all, he may mistakenly imagine what it is about. In contrast, the same lawyer would not be affected if he received advice to use a "graph bank" solution.
Technical names do not communicate and do not sell either. In this sense, artificial intelligence is a victim of this unfortunate coincidence. To escape the new hype, it will be necessary for our community to dedicate itself to understanding what artificial intelligence really is and what its real possibilities are. Otherwise, we will continue in the succession of hypes , which alienate more than they inform.
This post is part of a series. Before reading, see the Previous post .
Convinced of the usefulness of a classifier of judicial decisions as to their outcome, we began to organize the data. The first step was to download the STF's rulings and develop a relational model to structure the information. Basically, it was necessary to build a collection and the fields in which each judgment would be fragmented.
For this purpose, a computer program was developed capable of downloading and storing the data separated by judgment, class, number and, especially, with the identification of the respective judgment certificate. As it seems intuitive, This is a phase that requires a huge investment in terms of technology, combined with the attention of the team of jurists to separate the parts of the judgment to be consulted for the subsequent classification of the decisions.
We have separated the essentials in a very detailed way and kept some information in a raw state for later review. We divided the team into those responsible for reading the judgment certificates of each procedural class, starting with the following: writ of mandamus, complaint, habeas corpus and extraordinary appeal. We decided not to work with other processes, as they were very small in number.
While the first classes had a few thousand judgments each, the extraordinary appeals were evaluated in a much larger volume. In fact, its greater volume has always been an obstacle to empirical research on diffuse control of constitutionality, as more organization is needed to work on decisions in the tens of thousands of lines. It's really not something that a researcher can just do .
We organized this data on an annotation platform, in such a way that, together, the team of jurists would be able to propose an initial model for classifying the results of the judgments. After much discussion about the options of building a more complex or simpler classifier, the following model emerged:
We therefore decided to make a preliminary judgment (by majority or unanimity), which, if positive, would lead to the evaluation of the merits. Likewise, the judgment on the merits was bipartite in its modes (majority or unanimity) and respective outcomes: positive and negative. Finally, specifically for the judgment of positive merit, we also divide the evaluation by the scope of the provision: total or partial.
From this sequence of judgments, illustrated in the radial, we would be able to expand the sample to the tens of thousands of judgments in a consistent way.
What was missing was only a note-taking platform that would be able to house this work, allowing researchers simultaneous access to the collection. We then transfer the collection to a cloud infrastructure equipped with this capacity and start the classification. A simplified example of how data is structured, taking writs of mandamus as an example, is the following:
Although some parts of the table have been omitted (which preserves the originality of the research until its publication), it is already possible to notice the structure we set up for annotation of the mode (majority or unanimous). As an example, in the case of extraordinary appeals, we classified 3,972 judgments as unanimous, with the following variations: unanimous, unanimous, unanimous, agreement of votes and uniform decision.
This means that, at this point, Our database now has almost four thousand links properly labeled. They are real processes, of which we know several attributes. The same philosophy applies to the vocabulary present in the collection to classify the outcome (positive or negative) of the judgment. The difference is that there are not just five, but hundreds of variations of words used to translate the outcome of a judgment.
As we know a lot about each of these processes, it becomes possible to train a machine so that, recognizing a pattern, it suggests a label contemplating the mode (e.g., unanimous) and the outcome (e.g., unfavorable) in the face of a new judgment that may be handed down. Thus, we teach the machine to quickly classify thousands of new decisions, based on the curation carried out by our researchers.
Machine learning itself is also not a trivial task and will be the subject of a new post. So far, we have only dealt with data preparation , which is an essential and often overlooked step. Without properly organized data, it is not possible to develop artificial intelligence solutions.
This post is part of a series. Before reading, see the Previous post .
Convinced of the usefulness of a classifier of judicial decisions as to their outcome, we began to organize the data. The first step was to download the STF's rulings and develop a relational model to structure the information. Basically, it was necessary to build a collection and the fields in which each judgment would be fragmented.
For this purpose, a computer program was developed capable of downloading and storing the data separated by judgment, class, number and, especially, with the identification of the respective judgment certificate. As it seems intuitive, This is a phase that requires a huge investment in terms of technology, combined with the attention of the team of jurists to separate the parts of the judgment to be consulted for the subsequent classification of the decisions.
We have separated the essentials in a very detailed way and kept some information in a raw state for later review. We divided the team into those responsible for reading the judgment certificates of each procedural class, starting with the following: writ of mandamus, complaint, habeas corpus and extraordinary appeal. We decided not to work with other processes, as they were very small in number.
While the first classes had a few thousand judgments each, the extraordinary appeals were evaluated in a much larger volume. In fact, its greater volume has always been an obstacle to empirical research on diffuse control of constitutionality, as more organization is needed to work on decisions in the tens of thousands of lines. It's really not something that a researcher can just do .
We organized this data on an annotation platform, in such a way that, together, the team of jurists would be able to propose an initial model for classifying the results of the judgments. After much discussion about the options of building a more complex or simpler classifier, the following model emerged:
We therefore decided to make a preliminary judgment (by majority or unanimity), which, if positive, would lead to the evaluation of the merits. Likewise, the judgment on the merits was bipartite in its modes (majority or unanimity) and respective outcomes: positive and negative. Finally, specifically for the judgment of positive merit, we also divide the evaluation by the scope of the provision: total or partial.
From this sequence of judgments, illustrated in the radial, we would be able to expand the sample to the tens of thousands of judgments in a consistent way.
What was missing was only a note-taking platform that would be able to house this work, allowing researchers simultaneous access to the collection. We then transfer the collection to a cloud infrastructure equipped with this capacity and start the classification. A simplified example of how data is structured, taking writs of mandamus as an example, is the following:
Although some parts of the table have been omitted (which preserves the originality of the research until its publication), it is already possible to notice the structure we set up for annotation of the mode (majority or unanimous). As an example, in the case of extraordinary appeals, we classified 3,972 judgments as unanimous, with the following variations: unanimous, unanimous, unanimous, agreement of votes and uniform decision.
This means that, at this point, Our database now has almost four thousand links properly labeled. They are real processes, of which we know several attributes. The same philosophy applies to the vocabulary present in the collection to classify the outcome (positive or negative) of the judgment. The difference is that there are not just five, but hundreds of variations of words used to translate the outcome of a judgment.
As we know a lot about each of these processes, it becomes possible to train a machine so that, recognizing a pattern, it suggests a label contemplating the mode (e.g., unanimous) and the outcome (e.g., unfavorable) in the face of a new judgment that may be handed down. Thus, we teach the machine to quickly classify thousands of new decisions, based on the curation carried out by our researchers.
Machine learning itself is also not a trivial task and will be the subject of a new post. So far, we have only dealt with data preparation , which is an essential and often overlooked step. Without properly organized data, it is not possible to develop artificial intelligence solutions.
Legal professionals consume several types of legal information, two of which are the main ones: law and jurisprudence. The law is an abstract norm, that is, it has not been applied to a concrete case. Jurisprudence, on the other hand, is a concrete rule, made to solve a case submitted to the Judiciary.
Although it is relatively easy to know the laws, as they are published in official repositories, it is much more complex to know the jurisprudence. The most widely used legislative repository is that of the Plateau and it illustrates well how the various forms of federal legislation are organized and consumed in Brazil. In contrast, There are several courts and each one is responsible for publishing its own jurisprudence .
In general, courts treat such data as natural language documents, with a relatively limited additional layer of metadata.
Thus, there are few filters to access this information, for example: the date of the judgment, the name of the judge, the body to which this judge belongs, the name and position of each party in the process, etc. We did not, however, find any public repository organized around the dimension of the result of the judgment, whether favorable or unfavorable its outcome.
Let's consider the following use case:
It is possible to imagine that a lawyer from a bank does a research on case law in a certain court to assess the chance of success of a new lawsuit.
As the STF's judgment base is indexed, it can, with some ease, find concrete cases that dealt with a certain topic. However, the lawyer has a lot of difficulty in finding, within this topic, which were the cases won by banks and in which the same banks were defeated.
The usefulness of developing a solution that understands which are the favorable and unfavorable cases lies in enabling an aggregate consultation also by this dimension, referring to the result of the judgment. After all, the professional consultation almost always has an interested side, in such a way that knowing the outcome of the case is very important information for the practical life of legal professionals.
In the coming weeks, we will publish here the journey of several of DireitoTec's researchers, dedicated to mapping tens of thousands of STF judgments. This will make it possible to create a foundation for artificial intelligence training in such a way that it is possible to automatically classify the outcome of a judgment. What about? Sounds promising?
This post is part of a series. See the Next post .