AI-Powered ‘Robot Lawyer’ Takes First Court Case Next Month

A court hearing scheduled for February will set a terrifying precedent.

An individual will be represented in court using artificial intelligence for the first time ever.

The defendant will use a smartphone app and earpiece to hear advice from a ‘robot lawyer.’

The robot lawyer will advise the defendant on what to say in court.

DoNotPay, a company founded in 2015 by a then-Stanford University freshman to appeal parking tickets, developed the technology.

The DoNotPay app is the home of the world’s first robot lawyer. Fight corporations, beat bureaucracy and sue anyone at the press of a button.

'Robot lawyer' powered by AI will help fight speeding ticket as it takes first case in court https://t.co/o4ccIBrThv pic.twitter.com/tTBXtPWMLZ

— New York Post (@nypost) January 5, 2023

Robot lawyer takes its first case: Hearing next month will see the defendant get advice from AI. Congratulations ⁦@jbrowder1⁩ for disrupting the legal system for the sake of the “little guy” https://t.co/mIuhN3qbZP

— Bill Browder (@Billbrowder) January 4, 2023

Daily Mail reported:

The courthouse location, charges and name of the defendant have not been revealed, according to New Scientist.

Joshua Browder initially created the robot to appeal parking tickets in the UK when he first launched the technology but has since expanded it to the US.

However, this technology was designed in a chat format where the bot would proceed with questions to learn the details of your case, such as ‘were you or someone you know driving?’ or ‘was it hard to understand the parking signs?’

After it analyzes your answers, the robot decides if you qualify for an appeal, if yes, it will generate an appeal letter that can be brought to the courts.

A similar format will be used in the February court case, but will ‘listen’ to conversations between the prosecutor and defendant to advise its client on what to say next.

The AI, however, was trained on factual statements to ‘minimize legal liability,’ Browder told New Scientist.

He also tweaked the audio tool not to react to statements instantly, instead letting the offense finish their discussion, analyze comments and then present a solution.

“It’s all about language, and that’s what lawyers charge hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to do,” Browder said.

Browder believes the technology will one day replace lawyers, according to the outlet.

“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,” he explained.

The New York Post added:

According to Browder, his company’s AI begins by asking the client what the legal problem is, then finds a loophole and turns that loophole into a legal letter, which it can send to the right institution, or upload to a website.

Browder explained in a promotional video that he started his company “by accident” after moving to the US from his native UK to attend Stanford.

While in school, he began accumulating parking tickets, which he could not afford to pay. So Browder said he became “an expert” on loopholes that would allow him to get out of paying the fines.

As a software engineer, Browder said he realized that the tedious process of writing legal letters to appeal parking tickets could be automated, so that’s what he did, creating a website where people could challenge their parking tickets.

“The goal of this company is to make the $200 billion legal profession free for consumers,” Browder said.