University of São Paulo Law School, Ribeirão Preto

The Empirical Research in Law Lab (LabPED) of FDRP/USP has developed the app “Myrthes”. The app’s purpose is to optimize data collection ans organization stages in research activities carried out by undergraduate and graduate students at FDRP who analyze court procedures from de São Paulo Justice Court (TJSP).

The app provides information which is already open to the general public through the TJSP webpage. However, the app presents many advantages when compared to the direct search (made through the TJSP page), namely: quickly downloading the search data; organizing them in a table; establishing the table’s criteria, according to parameters defined by the researcher. The app also offers natural language processing and text mining tools . Both these tools can help improve extraction of information relevant to research.

Many surveys carried out in undergraduate and graduate research projects at FDRP involve the analysis of data from court procedures, especially from the TJSP. However, most of these students dedicated up to 70% of their research schedule for the data collection and organization stages. By using the app, this time can be significantly reduced.

The app is free of charge and is to be used exclusively by students and professors of FDRP. The TJSP and LabPED have access to what data was downloaded by whom. This is one of the first brazilian applications  that offers this type of service, for free, with purely academic purposes and that was developed to help improve the quality of empirical research in law.

The application project was developed by FDRP Post Doctoral student José de Jesus Filho, under supervision of Professor Fabiana Cristina Severi, with technical collaboration from the FDRP Information Technology Department, especially Tadeu Mesquita. Professors Paulo Eduardo Alves da Silva, Camilo Zufelato and Maria Paula Bertran, who are all connected to LabPED, were also involved. The expectation for 2019 is to develop similar tools to work with data from other Brazilian courts.

The name, “Myrthes”, was tribute to the first woman to practice Law professionally in Brazil. She was born in 1875, in Macaé, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. As well as professionally practicing Law, Myrthes Gomes de Campos carried out many jurisprudential analysis studies in themes regarding female freedom, including female voting and woman’s legal emancipation. Her work was published in many legal works and articles. Myrthes is one of our pioneer feminist jurists, defending female empowerment up until her death, in 1965.

For more information about Myrthes Gomes de Campos, click: http://www.revistagenero.uff.br/index.php/revistagenero/article/viewFile/85/62.