On May 23, Ivar A. Hartmann, Professor at FGV’s Rio de Janeiro Law School (Direito Rio), attended the LawTech Conference, in Sao Paulo. The world’s largest lawtech event brought together over 2,500 legal practitioners to discuss how technology can help them address the industry’s key issues.

During the event, Hartmann spoke about the pioneering initiative developed by him for six years at FGV Direito Rio, in which he encourages young law students to learn programming languages applied to the demands of the legal area. He explained how data science is becoming an indispensable tool for lawyers, in particular those who will soon be entering the labor market. According to the professor, there are two paths to follow:

“The first option is to work in private enterprise as a junior lawyer, carrying out repetitive manual work for five years and then be fired because the firm hired a lawtech to do the same job. The second is to create the lawtech or the software that will cause the dismissal,” he said.

Since 2013 FGV Direito Rio has offered “Programming for Lawyers” as a complementary activity of the Law degree course. The initiative, which year after year has attracted more and more interested students, became part of the compulsory curriculum of the undergraduate degree in 2019 and is currently also offered as an Extension Course in a program aimed at professionals who seek expertise to be at the forefront of knowledge on technology applied to Law.

“The course features an introduction to the Python programming language, as well as features, and exercises with databases. The students get together in groups and present a pitch from the startup they idealized to an examining board with people on the market, the directors of lawtechs,” said Hartman.

Some examples of the actual application in the legal activity routine were presented during the event. Hartmann showed a script made by a student, which generates petitions for habeas corpus proceedings. The professor argued that it is necessary to stimulate a change of mentality while the professionals are still in training, in the Law schools.

“After wanting to develop a programming discipline when I was young and almost being denied this possibility at the institution at the time, after seeing so many students graduating in law and learning to code, it is very clear that we need to change legal education. This starts in programming. There is no point in waiting for the future of legal education – we have to do it,” he said.