Ricardo Fernandes is an AI researcher, impact entrepreneur, and founder at the forefront of Legal AI in Brazil. He was the founder of Legal Labs — the largest exit of a native AI startup in Brazil until 2019 — and subsequently served as Chief Legal AI Researcher and Partner at Neoway, Brazil’s largest big data company, acquired in 2021 by B3 (the unique Brazilian Stock Exchange).

Fernandes was one of the leading figures behind Project VICTOR — the first supreme court AI system in the world, deployed at Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) in 2018. He led Legal AI projects, including for the four largest telecom companies in Brazil, with fraud pattern identification across more than 2 million lawsuits. He also led AML parameter identification at Neoway using public data sources, including lawsuits.

He is a speaker on Legal AI and the author/coordinator of 14 books and 27 scientific articles. He completed a post-doctoral research study visit at CodeX — the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics — in 2017, with research published in Big Data Law (Edward Elgar, 2021), edited by Roland Vogl. He completed a PhD in Law at the University of Brasília (UnB), rated 7 by CAPES (BR), where he also served as a Master’s and PhD professor.