Deadlines in Brazil’s Special Civil Courts: counting and precautions

Brazil's Special Civil Courts (Juizados Especiais Cíveis, the small-claims courts) were created to be fast and simple. That simplicity, however, doesn't reduce the need for control: short deadlines and a high volume of cases make organization even more important.

Business days in the Special Courts too

For a long time there was disagreement on how deadlines should be counted in these courts. Law 13,728/2018 added article 12-A to Law 9,099/1995 and settled the issue: when deadlines are set in days, for any procedural act, including appeals, only business days are counted.

Deadlines that come up often

• Appeal against the judgment (recurso inominado): 10 days, counted from notice of the judgment;
• Motion for clarification: 5 days;
• Response to the appeal: 10 days.

Always check your state's rules: these courts follow statements and rules specific to each state court and appeals panel.

Specific precautions

1. Appeal fees: payment has its own deadline, and failing to pay leads to dismissal of the appeal;
2. Conciliation hearing: if the plaintiff fails to appear, the case may be dismissed;
3. Electronic notices: follow the court's system with the same discipline as in the regular courts.

High volume requires process, not effort

Firms with a small-claims caseload (consumer, banking, telecom, air travel) often have hundreds of similar cases. The secret is to standardize: filing templates, stage workflows and automatic capture of court notices.

How IntegraLegal solves this

IntegraLegal captures court notices automatically, calculates deadlines in business days and organizes your caseload in a case kanban by stage. With the case workflow, each type of action follows the same steps, and document templates come out already filled in with case and client data.

Handle more cases with the same team: try IntegraLegal free for 7 days.

Read also

• How to count procedural deadlines under the CPC without missing the day
• Local court holidays: the detail that can make a filing untimely
• Automatic case monitoring: stop checking court by court

Notice: this content is for information only. It does not replace a lawyer's analysis of the specific case. Always check the legislation, case law and rules in force on the date of your consultation.