Career
Sergio Bermudes founded the law firm, which takes his name, 1969.
His career has spanned almost 50 years during which time he has earned a reputation as one of Brazil’s most prominent trial lawyers and legal strategists. He is renowned both for his courtroom skills, honed before national courts and domestic and international tribunals, and for the quality of his legal advice.
In the 1970’s, Brazil was governed by a dictatorship, and Sergio Bermudes won widespread public acclaim for his courageous representation of the widow of the journalist Vladimir Herzog who had died in unexplained circumstances whilst being detained by the military. In a highly-charged case, the dictatorship suffered its first legal defeat, with the court holding that Herzog had been unlawfully killed whilst in the custody of the Brazilian Army.
By the 1980’s Sergio Bermudes was already one of Brazil’s leading names in civil litigation and corporate restructure, with a nationwide practice. He was one of the main figures in the legal battle over the financial rights of individuals whose savings accounts were frozen as part of the Brazilian government’s anti-inflation drives in the 1980’s and 90’s and which continued until it was finally settled in 2017.
The practice expanded rapidly and nowadays the firm has offices in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasília and Belo Horizonte, staffed by over 130 lawyers, 120 interns and over 250 support personnel.
Sergio Bermudes is also an eminent professor of law. His first teaching post was that of Assistant Professor of General Theory of the State at the Faculty of Law of the Guanabara State University and, in the same year, he was appointed Professor of Civil Litigation at the Brazilian Faculty of Law (Faculdade Brasileira de Ciências Jurídicas) in Rio de Janeiro a post for which he granted tenure by the Federal Council of Education in 1971. In 1978, he was appointed Professor of Civil Litigation at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro where he still teaches and also sits as a member of the University Development Council.
He is frequently called upon to sit on Examination Panels for the appointment of public officials including judges, state and municipal attorneys (Rio de Janeiro) and others.
Sergio is a regular guest speaker at academic and professional conferences, seminars and other legal events, both in Brazil and abroad.
He was invited by the Federal Government, in 1985, to sit on a Law Commission, composed of five civil litigation experts, set up to review the Civil Procedure Code.
He sat, for two years, as a justice on the Regional Electoral Tribunal of Rio de Janeiro.
Publications
Sergio has published innumerable articles in specialist legal journals on issues of Civil Litigation, Civil Law, Constitutional Law, Commercial Law and Administrative Law. Since 1996, he has been the editor in charge of updating the 18 volumes of the Commentary on the Civil Procedure Code (Comentários ao Código de Processo Civil) written by the late de Pontes de Miranda, and published by the Published by Forense, Rio. He is also the author of the following works:
– Curso de Direito Processual Civil – Recursos (Civil Procedure -Appeals): published by Borsoi, 1972
– Iniciação ao Estudo do Direito Processual Civi (Introduction to Civil Procedure)l: Published by Liber Júris, 1973
– Comentários ao Código de Processo Civil, Vol. VII (Commentary on the Civil Procedure Code): published by Revista dos Tribunais, 1975 e 1977
– Caso Herzog: a sentença (Ruling on the ‘Herzog’ case), published by Salamandra, 1978
– Estado de direito e direito de petição (the Rule of Law and the right to petition) published by Executive, 1978
– Tutela jurisdicional da Liberdade (the Legal Protection of Freedom), published by the Bar Association – OAB, 1980
– Direito Processual Civil – Estudos e Pareceres (Studies and Opinions on Civil Prpcedure): published by Saraiva, 1983, 1994 and 2002
– Papel e organização de magistrados e advogados nas sociedades contemporâneas (The role and organization of judges and lawyers in contemporary societies), published by Associação Internacional de Direito Judiciário, 1991
– Introdução ao Processo Civil: (Introduction to Civil Procedure) published by Forense, Rio de Janeiro, in five editions from 1995 onwards
– A Reforma do Código de Processo Civil (Reform of the Civil Procedure Code): published by Freitas Bastos, 1995, TRT, 1995 and Saraiva, 1996 and 2010
– Sessão solene & conferências jurídicas (Formal sittings and legal conferences), published by TJPE, 2004
– Reforma do judiciário pela emenda constitucional n. 45 (Reform of the judiciary by constitutional amendment), Forense, 2005
– CPC de 2015: Inovações, Vols. I e II (the Civil Procedure Code of 2015 – innovations: published by GZ, 2016 and 2018, respectively
