Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have leveraged promising results in solving complex problems in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP), being an important tool to help in the expeditious resolution of judicial proceedings in the legal area. In this context, this work targets the problem of detecting the degree of similarity between judicial documents that can be achieved in the inference group, by applying six NLP techniques based on the transformers architecture to a case study of legal proceedings in the Brazilian judicial system. The NLP transformer-based models, namely BERT, GPT-2 and RoBERTa, were pre-trained using a general purpose corpora of the Brazilian Portuguese language, and then were fine-tuned and specialised for the legal sector using 210,000 legal proceedings. Vector representations of each legal document were calculated based on their embeddings, which were used to cluster the lawsuits, calculating the quality of each model based on the cosine of the distance between the elements of the group to its centroid. We noticed that models based on transformers presented better performance when compared to previous traditional NLP techniques, with the RoBERTa model specialised for the Brazilian Portuguese language presenting the best results. This methodology can be also applied to other case studies for different languages, making it possible to advance in the current state of the art in the area of NLP applied to the legal sector.

Can humanity, which flourished when it was Homo Sapiens and move to the top of the chain, be dominated in the future by more advanced beings it has built? According to Yuval Noah Harari, it is possible to understand artificial intelligence through 2 concepts. To him, intelligence is our problem-solving ability. Our consciousness means our ability to feel things. In artificial intelligence, the intelligence part is done, but the consciousness part is missing.

A U.S. Army soldier monitors a 14' Shadow surveillance drone from a control room after it's launched. There is now interest in taking AI beyond the courtroom and into the realms of conflict resolution. There is growing concern that current mediation and peacemaking approaches are proving less and less effective in resolving localized and international conflicts. In response, interest is rising in the potential for artificial intelligence to play a role in advising on or resolving complex conflicts. A combination of situational complexity, intractable positions of opposing sides and escalating costs is driving the search for AI-based approaches that could replace humans in resolving legal cases, international disputes and military conflicts.

Whenever a professional sector faces new technology, questions arise regarding how that technology will disrupt daily operations and the careers of those who choose that profession. And lawyers and the legal profession are no exception. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to transform the legal profession in many ways, but in most cases it augments what humans do and frees them up to take on higher-level tasks such as advising to clients, negotiating deals and appearing in court. Artificial intelligence mimics certain operations of the human mind and is the term used when machines are able to complete tasks that typically require human intelligence. The term machine learning is when computers use rules (algorithms) to analyze data and learn patterns and glean insights from the data.

In its 2018 report, Will robots really steal our jobs?, PwC suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) threatened 30% of jobs in the UK. Much of the discussion on the introduction of AI and the potential effects on the legal sector is equally negative. Legal professionals have raised concerns that developments in AI-powered technology could threaten the security of junior roles, such as paralegals and research positions, within the next decade. Impressive advances in AI technology tailored for legal work have led some lawyers to worry that their profession is in jeopardy. However, in reality the likelihood of a lawyer's replacement is relatively low compared to that of a law student or a paralegal.

An academic and a lawyer have teamed up to develop a robot lawyer, which, if successful, will make legal advice affordable to people from all backgrounds, while revolutionizing the legal sector. Robots could take on significant parts of a lawyer's work, reducing the costs and barriers to access to legal services for everyone, rather than just those who can afford the high costs. The project, at the University of Bradford, is initially working on a machine learning-based application to provide immigration-related legal advice, but if successful, it could be replicated across the legal sector. The project was devised by Yash Dubal, immigration lawyer and director at AY&J, and Dhaval Thakker, associate professor at the faculty of engineering and informatics at the University of Bradford. It will harness complex knowledge graph technology and deep learning algorithms to analyse case law and learn from it.

An academic and a lawyer have teamed up to develop a robot lawyer, which, if successful, will make legal advice affordable to people from all backgrounds, while revolutionising the legal sector. Robots could take on significant parts of a lawyer's work, reducing the costs and barriers to access to legal services for everyone, rather than just those who can afford the high costs. The project, at the University of Bradford, is initially working on a machine learning-based application to provide immigration-related legal advice, but if successful, it could be replicated across the legal sector. The idea has received government backing in the form of a £170,000 grant from Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. Legal firm AY&J Solicitors is providing a further £70,000 as well as the vital knowledge of lawyers.

In a survey conducted by Gurugram-based BML Munjal University (School of Law) in July 2020, it was found that about 42% of lawyers believed that in the next 3 to 5 years as much as 20% of regular, day-to-day legal works could be performed with technologies such as artificial intelligence. The survey also found that about 94% of law practitioners favoured research and analytics as to the most desirable skills in young lawyers. Earlier this year, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, in no uncertain terms, underlined that the Indian judiciary must equip itself with incorporating artificial intelligence in its system, especially in dealing with document management and cases of repetitive nature. With more industries and professional sectors embracing AI and data analytics, the legal industry, albeit in a limited way, is no exception. According to the 2020 report of the National Judicial Data Grid, over the last decade, 3.7 million cases were pending across various courts in India, including high courts, district and taluka courts.

Every business in virtually every industry you can think of has had its world turned upside down by the Covid-19 pandemic. And as the lockdown has progressed, it's become increasingly clear that things won't be...

Today, we see how computer programs, algorithms, and robots replace simple human activities, but there is the technology that is at the forefront of the spectrum: AI. The consequences of artificial intelligence have such an impact that they incite us to wonder if we are experiencing the beginning of a new era. According to Gartner, business use of AI has grown by 270% in the last four years, and slightly more than a third of organizations have implemented AI in some way, according to their specific needs. But is this also a reality within the legal sector? AI has found its way to support attorneys and clients alike, and there is a clear growing interest in technology.