By Magno Francisco Pereira, of Lassori’s civil area. Article published on the portal of the magazine Capital Aberto
The slowness and complexity of the judicial system are historical challenges. However, a transformation driven by technology is redesigning the landscape of justice and debt collection. The impact is not merely incremental; it is a paradigm shift that moves the sector from a reactive and analog model to a proactive, digital, and data-driven ecosystem.
This movement is driven by two main fronts: the internal modernization of the Judiciary itself and the exponential growth of external digital platforms that resolve pending matters before they reach the courts.
Within the courts, the digitalization of proceedings — by means of systems such as PJe and e-SAJ — represented the first great advance toward the modernization of Brazilian Justice. However, the true transformation is occurring now, with the application of intelligence and automation to the immense volume of procedural data.
Artificial Intelligence is beginning to occupy a strategic role: triaging cases, grouping mass demands, and even suggesting drafts of decisions in repetitive cases. Jurimetrics tools — which apply statistical methods to Law — already make it possible to measure success rates, identify patterns of judgment, and predict the average duration of a case, providing concrete bases for more efficient decisions.
In debt recovery, technology has also revolutionized the effectiveness of enforcement actions. Systems such as SISBAJUD, which blocks amounts in bank accounts, and RENAJUD, which imposes restrictions on vehicles, have made the location and seizure of assets much more agile.
Today, attachment orders that previously took weeks can be fulfilled in minutes, significantly raising recovery rates and confidence in judicial enforcement.
While the Judiciary modernizes from within, an ecosystem of lawtechs and fintechs has flourished, focused on avoiding litigation. It is here that debt recovery and dispute resolution converge.
The old collection model, based on call centers, was expensive, inefficient, and generated high friction with the client. Digital platforms have inverted this logic by using data and self-service.
Instead of mass calls, in data intelligence the AI analyzes the debtor’s profile and calculates the “propensity to pay,” defining the best approach, the best channel (WhatsApp, SMS, E-mail), and the best negotiation offer.
Self-service has become the great differentiator. Digital environments allow the debtor himself to consult pending matters, simulate conditions, and conclude agreements autonomously, without the embarrassment of direct negotiation. This dynamic raised efficiency and reduced friction, while at the same time making the experience simpler and less invasive.
When the pending matter is not a simple debt, but a dispute — as in cases of a product not delivered or undue charges — the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platforms come into play. These systems apply digital methods of negotiation, mediation, and arbitration to resolve conflicts in a more agile, accessible, and automated manner, offering a concrete alternative to the slowness of the traditional judicial process.
In Brazil, Consumidor.gov.br is the greatest example. It is a public and free platform where the consumer registers a complaint and the company has a deadline to negotiate directly, resolving thousands of conflicts that, otherwise, would become lawsuits.
The boundary between “collection” and “dispute” is becoming increasingly tenuous. The most sophisticated advance in this scenario is that of integrated platforms, capable of managing the entire life cycle of a pending matter, from the diagnosis of the problem to the automatic routing to the most adequate solution.
Superapps — such as Nubank and Mercado Pago — are the most evident example of this convergence. In a single interface, the user can both pay an invoice in installments (collection/credit flow) and contest a purchase (dispute/ODR flow). Behind the scenes, artificial intelligence makes the diagnosis in real time: is it a matter of ability to pay, which requires a negotiation route, or of the merit of the charge, which demands a mediation flow?
This unified ecosystem, where dispute data feeds the credit models and vice versa, is the future. Serasa, for example, already operates as an ecosystem: it is a credit bureau (data), operates Limpa Nome (a negotiation platform), and offers companies risk-management solutions.
Despite the advances, this revolution brings challenges. Data protection (LGPD) is crucial, since these systems handle sensitive financial and personal information. In addition, digital exclusion is a real concern, since not all citizens have access or the ability to navigate these self-service portals.
The future points to an even greater integration, where justice and debt recovery cease to be a “place” (the court, the call center) to become a digital “function,” accessible, fast, and based on data.
The digitalization of Justice and of credit is not merely an operational advance; it is a structural repositioning of the very concept of access to Justice. When algorithms come to mediate decisions and agreements, Law ceases to be merely a system of norms and comes to be also a system of data. This transition demands constant vigilance over ethics, transparency, and inclusion, under penalty of reproducing in the digital environment the inequalities of the analog world.
The challenge now does not lie in proving the efficiency of technology — that is already a fact —, but in ensuring that innovation serves citizenship and not merely convenience. The Justice of the future will be measured not by the number of cases judged, but by the capacity to resolve conflicts in a fair, accessible, and comprehensible manner for all.
The path is set: technology has already reconfigured collection, mediation, and enforcement. What remains now is to consolidate a digital ecosystem that unites efficiency and legitimacy — because, ultimately, the true revolution is not digital, it is of trust.
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