The world's first robot lawyer was sued for lack of specialized education

The first of its kind robotic "lawyer" faced accusations from real lawyers. The American law firm Edelson has sued the artificial intelligence-based application DoNotPay, which, according to the lawsuit, is guilty of "posing as a licensed practicing lawyer". This is reported by the Daily Mail.

The author of DoNotPay, Stanford graduate Joshua Browder, created his chatbot in 2015 to help people who are struggling alone with large corporations and need legal information.

His first clients were people who challenged parking fines. Subsequently, DoNotPay's competencies expanded: now he advises not only about car fines, but also on payments for delayed flights, labor rights, misleading advertising. When a person addresses him, the chatbot asks questions to find out the details of the case, and then analyzes the answers and makes a decision on whether it makes sense to go to court. If the answer turns out to be positive, DoNotPay generates a statement.

A commendable initiative, it would seem, but ordinary lawyers did not appreciate the "colleague". Representatives of the Chicago law firm Edelson, who filed the lawsuit, stated that "DoNotPay is not really a robot, nor a lawyer, nor a law firm. DoNotPay has no legal education and is not controlled by any lawyer". The creator of the chatbot Browder, who faces imprisonment for six months, also does not have a corresponding education.

The lawyers of Edelson claim that they personally used DoNotPay to compile complaints, but did not receive services that they could use in court. In addition, they cite the stories of other users who paid for the services of a chatbot, but lost. "It is reckless and dangerous to provide legal services to the public without being a lawyer or even under the supervision of a lawyer. And this has real consequences for the clients it harms", - the plaintiffs write.

Joshua Browder wrote on his social networks that "the claims have no basis". "Once again, lawyers are the winners. That's why I wanted to do something about it by creating a robot lawyer DoNotPay to give consumers the opportunity to fight corporations on their own", - he writes. It's usually best to keep quiet, Broden continues, but he's not going to turn the cheek to the richest law firm known for its successful lawsuits for billions against Google, Amazon and Apple. "So, we will fight back! We have receipts, we have nothing to hide, and we will defend ourselves. We can even use our robot lawyer in this case".