Who are the most effective lawyers in the Labor Court of Rio de Janeiro? Using data from tens of thousands of legal cases, we construct a network of lawyers (directed and weighted) in order to answer this and other questions. The empirical evaluation reveals a network structure with features commonly founded in other real social networks such as short distances and heavy tailed weight distribution. Metrics such as vertex strength, Pagerank, and closeness were used to rank vertices, identifying the most effective lawyers in the network. By using external information about lawyers and their relationship to different trials we (partially) validate the rankings obtained through the network analysis. This study suggests that the network structure induced by lawyers contains useful information concerning their effectiveness within the community.
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