Robot Lawyer To Advise Defendant in Historic Court Case
DoNotPay's robot lawyer is set to make history at a court hearing in February, when a defendant will be represented by artificial intelligence. The technology was created by DoNotPay, a company founded in 2015 by a then-Stanford University freshman, initially as a tool to help people appeal parking tickets. Using a smartphone app and earpiece, the defendant will be able to hear advice from the robot lawyer on what to say in court. The name of the defendant, the charges, and the courthouse location have not been disclosed.
Joshua Browder initially created the robot to help people contest parking tickets in the UK when he first launched the technology, and has since extended the service to the US.
This technology is presented in the form of a chat, where the bot will ask questions to understand the details of the case, such as "Was it you or somebody else driving?" or "Was it hard to understand the parking signs?"
Screenshot by Joshua Browder: chat with DoNotPay bot
Obtaining legal advice can be costly, but a new robot lawyer could provide the same service for free. This technology was developed by Joshua Browder, and it has already overturned 160,000 parking tickets.
The robot lawyer is capable of helping with 1,000 legal areas. It is programmed to understand language and analyze conversations between the prosecutor and defendant. This is to make sure the robot lawyer can provide the best advice possible to its client.
Joshua Browder made sure the robot lawyer would not respond to statements instantly, instead allowing the offense to finish their discussion. This is to ensure the robot lawyer can analyze comments and present a solution. Browder believes this technology could one day replace lawyers. He believes lawyers charge too much money for simple tasks. He states that,
There'll still be a lot of good lawyers out there who may be arguing in the European Court of Human Rights, but a lot of lawyers are just charging way too much money to copy and paste documents and I think they will definitely be replaced, and they should be replaced.
Source: New Scientist
