DONOTPAY, THE COMPANY DELIVERING JUSTICE WITH ROBOT LAWYER 

Did you know that DoNotPay is the first company to build AI-powered “robot lawyer” that was first conceived as a solution to a personal problem?

DoNotPay, a California based company in the United States of America, is an online legal service and chatbot that provides a "robot lawyer" service that claims to make use of artificial intelligence (AI) to contest parking tickets and provide various other legal services, with a low subscription cost.

DoNotPay was originally created to solve a personal problem experienced by its founder, Joshua Browder, according to Harvard Business School. While attending Stanford, Browder repeatedly earned parking tickets for forgetting to feed his meter. A friend suggested that he contest the tickets to have them reduced. He wrote a letter to the city and his fine was reduced. This seemingly minor interaction exposed Browder to a larger truth: there are dozens of fines, tickets, contracts, and terms that the average consumer could contest, but doesn’t because they either don’t have time or because it’s not financially feasible to use a lawyer to do so. Browder set out to fix that problem, and DoNotPay was born.

DoNotPay started off as an app for contesting parking tickets. It sells services which generate documents on legal issues ranging from consumer protection to immigration rights; it states that these are generated via automation and AI. The company claims its application is supported by the IBM Watson AI. It is currently available in the United Kingdom and United States.

DoNotPay states that its services help customers seek refunds on flight tickets and hotel bookings, cancel free trials, sue people, offer legal services relating to social issues such as asylum applications and housing for the homeless, seek claims from Equifax during the aftermath of its security breach, provide automated services to users seeking to obtain U.S. visas and green cards. 

DoNotPay offers a Free Trial Card feature which gives users a virtual credit card number that can be used to sign up for free online trials (such as Netflix and Spotify). As soon as the free trial period ends, the card automatically declines any charges. DoNotPay also claims that its services include the ability to automatically apply for refunds, cancel subscriptions, get hassle-free trials, fight spam in people's inboxes, combat volatile airline prices, and file damage claims with city offices.

In 2016, Browder told The Guardian that the chatbot had contested more than 250,000 parking tickets in London and New York and won 160,000 of them, all free of charge, claiming a success rate of over 60 percent, although the newspaper did not appear to verify the claim.

Browder's technology has received mixed reviews. For example, a blog post from The Guardian noted that it "just drafted an impressive notice under the Data Protection Act 1998 not to use my personal information for direct marketing." Similarly, a writer with The American Lawyer noted that, "one of DoNotPay's chatbots helped me draft a strong, well-cited and appropriately toned letter requesting extended maternity leave."

However, Legal Cheek tested the service in 2016 with "fairly basic legal questions" and noted that it failed to answer most of them. Above the Law noted that the service may "be too good to be true" due to errors in the legal advice provided and "things as important as securing immigration status, which is one of the services DoNotPay promotes, mistakes can ruin lives." They recommended the service for "clear-cut issues like parking tickets or non-critical matters" but cautioned against it for legal issues with high stakes.

In 2021, DoNotPay raised $10 million by investors including Andreesen Horowitz, Lux Capital, Tribe Capital and more reaching a valuation of $210 million.

In January 2023, Browder claimed that the organization would attempt to use DoNotPay live in court, but was forced to halt after being warned about the unlicensed practice of law. In March 2023, the company faced a class-action lawsuit alleging that it "misled customers and misrepresented its product" and that company is “practicing law without a license.

DoNotPay faced a class action lawsuit that was filed by a Chicago-based law firm Edelson on March 3. The lawsuit, as Business Insider reported, was filed on behalf of Jonathan Faridian, who apparently used DoNotPay to write a series of legal documents like demand letters, a small claims court filing, and a job discrimination complaint. Faridian alleges in the complaint that he was under the impression that the legal documents were sourced from a "lawyer that was competent to provide them" but only received "substandard" results.

While some users have praised its offerings, DoNotPay's effectiveness and marketing have been subject to criticisms.

Sources:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoNotPay

https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/law-firm-sues-worlds-first-robot-lawyer-595686.html

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