Watch out, lawyers, for the chatbots
AI technology could transform legal profession
Chatbots — computer programs able to converse with humans via text or audio — have been around for years, but mainly in the domain of entertainment or corporate help lines.
Any suggestion that chatbots could be used in a professional service such as law, was often dismissed as ridiculous, or at the very least, a minor fringe use. Until now.
In mid-July, Joshua Browder, creator of the traffic- ticket- fighting chatbot DoNotPay launched a free, no- code chatbot that allows lawyers to create chatbots for any area of law. This gives everyday people access to free, instantaneous legal help through a form of artificial intelligence.
The story of DoNotPay began when a then-18- yearold Browder received a large number of parking tickets in the London borough of Camden. Parking officers there were, in his words, “ruthless” in their ticketing. Some tickets were admittedly his own fault, but a number of other tickets were for minor infractions, or mistakes by the traffic officer or local council.
So Browder created an application that appealed many of the tickets, and he often won. His family and friends took notice and soon he was successfully using the app for them as well.
In 2015, Browder took his app into the mainstream, first launching DoNotPay in the U. K ., then in the U.S. More than 400,000 parking tickets, with an estimated value of over US$ 10 million have been appealed — most of successfully.
Since 2015, Browder has launched chatbots in the U.S. and the U.K. that cover more than 1,000 legal areas, such as landlord and tenant matters, maternity leave issues, and harassment in the workplace. DoNotPay is also used in nine other countries including Canada, with recent launches in France, Italy and Germany. Human language is not a barrier for this chatbot, giving it a truly global reach.
Importantly, DoNotPay is completely free. “It’s a pure public service,” Browder said. “And it will only work if it’s completely free. My goal is to be able to help everyone in the world with their legal issues.”
So what does the DoNotPay chatbot actually do?
The user first types in his or her issue in her own words, for example, “my airline scammed me” or “my employer is racist.” DoNotPay then talks to the user to get the details and automatically generates a legally sound document that can be sent directly to authorities. If the user needs help that DoNotPay cannot provide, the chatbot will point him or her to another avenue of assistance, such as a legal clinic. “In that way people are never denied legal help,” Browder said.
The newly launched nocode option for DoNotPay should result in further accessible legal help as it allows anyone without coding expertise to create chatbots. In essence, DoNotPay has become IKEA for lawyers. So far, over 500 lawyers across the world have made use of the no- code option and created bots not only to assist clients but also to assist with internal firm processes.
Browder is only months away from his 21st birthday. He lives in the San Francisco area and is about to start his third year in Stanford University’s computer science program.
Law school doesn’t seem to be on the horizon for him, and he said he’s never made a penny from his chatbots.
Whatever is next for this legal entrepreneur is still unclear. “I’ve done all of this without resources and I’m starting to think what could be possible if I had significant resources. But I still haven’t decided where that will lead.”