# Challenges When Using Jurimetrics in Brazil--A Survey of Courts
## Brazil's Freedom of Information Act
### Jurimetrics in the Context of the Freedom of Information Act (FIA)  
Research in Law, as an applied social science, tends to produce qualitative studies, which is why quantitative research in this field is not common. The doctrine says that the quantitative method, although not very usual in this field, can be of great value when you want to understand legal phenomena of greater complexity [17].  
The advent of law 11.419/06 [2], which rules on the digitalization of the judicial process and the consequent use of integrated systems to handle the legal process, improved it productivity and it allowed for the registration, storage, and retrieval of information quickly and reliably, making room for the collection and analysis of judicial decisions to become systemic. This fact creates the possibility of a new analytical approach, where the jurimetric approach becomes feasible and can come into play. It allows for fast and objective gathering of data about how the law is being applied by querying massive amounts of rulings and other jurisprudence from the legal court databases.  
In 1971, [PERSON] [1], in the article \"Jurimetrics the Next Step Forward\" published by the Minnesota Law Review, coined the term \"jurimetrics\" to conceptualize the union of legal theory with the computational and statistical methods with the purpose of analyzing jurisprudence in order to make use of the law more predictable. Brazilian authors such as [PERSON] [18] defined the study of jurimetrics as a form of empirical research that relies on a statistical approach. [PERSON] also says that jurimetrics is the discipline that aims to investigate the law through the application of statistics. Its purpose is to understand what the real causes that lead to the creation of standards that make up the legal system are and what effects they produce in society [18].  
In this context, the quantitative method depends on data collection and analysis to respond to research questions and test the assumptions laid down previously and relies on numerical measurement, counting of occurrences and in the use of statistics to establish with accuracy the behavior patterns of a given population [19].  
The legal system adopted in Brazil is civil law, and its legal system comprises ordinary justice, which is divided into State and Federal courts, and special justice, which is divided into Labor, Electoral, and Military specialties. Anything that falls outside the jurisdiction of the Federal or the Special Justice is handled by the State System. The organizational standards of the judicial branch are defined in the Federal Constitution [9,20].  
Currently, the Brazilian judicial system has the following courts: the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the Superior Court of Justice (STI), the Superior Military Court (STM), the Superior Labor Court (TST), the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), five Federal regional courts (TRFs), 24 Regional Labor Courts (TRIs), 27 Regional Electoral Courts, three State Military Courts of Justice (TJMs), and 27 State Courts of Justice (TJs) [20].  
The Brazilian judiciary has 74 million litigations pending trial, where the State Courts are responsible for 69.3% of all the claims presented before the Judicial Branch, nonetheless being responsible for 79.8% of the pending courts' docket [21]. For this reason, this research focuses its analysis on the 27 State Courts of Justice.