Breaking News

Robot Lawyer Created by British Teenager

(No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

By Amanda Griffin

Posted on January 14, 2016

Photo credit: Joshua Browder’s YouTube Channel

Summary: The robot lawyer can provide guidance about basic legal issues through a chat conversation related to parking tickets, PPI claims and delayed flights/trains as well as a few other general topics.

Last year, British student Joshua Browder developed a website to help people appeal parking tickets that were unfair. Now he has developed an even greater tool to help people with some basic legal issues.

Browder, 19, studies computer science and economics at Stanford University. His latest development is a robot lawyer that actually talks with users to find out their legal issues. The idea for the robot lawyer came soon after his first website, DoNotPay, gained attention.

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Lawyers and Paralegals?

Browder started receiving thousands of emails a month asking him questions like “What happens if I can’t pay my court fine?” or “I got a parking ticket — which appeal should I choose?” He tried to answer them all but quickly realized he needed a better system. “To solve this problem, I realized that the best way to help people would be to create a computer program that could talk to users, generate appeals and answer questions like a human,” Browder told Mashable in an email.

Get JD Journal in Your Mail

Subscribe to our FREE daily news alerts and get the latest updates on the most happening events in the legal, business, and celebrity world. You also get your daily dose of humor and entertainment!!

Software Can Resolve Some Small Claims and Family Law Disputes

The robot works by asking a series of questions based on the users answers. “The robot can currently handle parking ticket appeals, payment protection insurance (PPI) claims and delayed flights/trains,” Browder explained. “It can also answer some general legal questions. I am ultimately looking to give it as much functionality as possible in the spirit of trying to replace the large group of exploitative lawyers.”

Once the robot has enough information and the information provided gives legal grounds for an appeal, it generates a letter for the user to use. Whenever the robot is unable to answer a question, Browder is notified so that he can try to provide an answer for them. He also uses the situation to “add functionality for any future requests of a similar nature.”