AI and Judicial Productivity: The Impact of MIDAS on the Courts of Fortaleza, Brazil

Gastón Pierri, Marcelo Fontenele and Jose Luiz Nunes

No 14700, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: This paper presents preliminary results from a pilot study conducted in the courts of Ceará, Brazil. The study evaluates the impact of introducing a tool that uses natural language processing and machine learning techniques to cluster judicial acts by textual similarity on clerk productivity, measured as the number of case files a clerk can produce in a day. Estimates indicate that treatment-group clerks produced approximately 10 more case files per day than control-group clerks, a statistically significant difference equivalent to a 37% increase relative to the control group mean. The results are robust to the exclusion of outlier observations and exceptionally productive clerks.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; Judicial Productivity; Natural Language Processing; Court Administration; Public Sector Automation; machine learning; Field experiment; access to justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 H83 J24 K40 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:14700

DOI: 10.18235/0014427

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