Bridging legal complexities and process modelling: improving judicial proceedings through BPMN

Our aim is to establish a methodology for formally abstracting judicial proceedings, which can be applied on a broader scale. This standard will serve to encourage feedback from both domain experts and non-experts, fostering under standing of the process among all stakeholders and enabling potential managerial insights and improvements. Additionally, it will facilitate generating a formally rigorous output suitable for integration into automated artificial intelligence sys tems and process mining tools, enabling comprehensive analysis. With a focus on Italy’s legal framework, which frequently faces challenges related to slow civil proceedings, we will introduce a case study by constructing a model of an employment proceeding. A thorough validation process by experts ensures the model’s faithfulness to real-world operations. Amid the unique difficulties of representing judicial pathways, managing varying timelines, and accommodating legal evolution, the paper highlights the complexities of employing the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) in the judicial context. The proposed guidelines, meticulously crafted to fit Italy’s legal landscape, encompass ele ments such as numeric identifiers, visually representing time limits, and incorpo rating essential yet unarticulated activities. In conclusion, this paper not only rec ognizes the challenges and intricacies of applying BPMN within the judicial sys tem but also introduces innovative solutions to surmount them. By strategically adapting BPMN to the legal context, we provide a roadmap for transforming the Italian judicial system into a more efficient and agile framework. As the legal landscape continues to evolve, merging advanced modelling techniques with ju dicial proceedings becomes a promising path toward progress and transfor mation.