The world's first robot lawyer is being sued

DoNotPay Inc, which calls itself "the world's first robot lawyer," is facing a new lawsuit from prominent Chicago-based law firm Edelson that says the company is practicing law without a license.

According to Reuters, Edelson filed the proposed class action in San Francisco state court on March 3. Among its arguments, it points out that this AI does not have supervision by a lawyer.

"Unfortunately for its customers, 'DoNotPay' is not a robot, a lawyer, or a law firm. 'DoNotPay' does not have a law degree, is not barred in any jurisdiction, and is not supervised by any lawyer," says the lawsuit collected by 'Business Insider.'

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The Chicago-based law firm filed the case on behalf of California resident Jonathan Faridian, who said he used San Francisco-based DoNotPay to draft legal documents and complained about poor results.

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Faridian said he used DoNotPay to draft legal documents, including demand letters, a small claims court filing, and a job discrimination complaint, three documents outside of what the AI initially conceived for.

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'DoNotPay' advertises itself as 'The World's First Robot Lawyer.' According to Reuters, the lawsuit said Joshua Browder founded the firm in 2015 with a focus on tasks such as fighting parking tickets, and it has expanded to include some legal services.

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Among the options offered by 'DoNotPay' is to make insurance claims, help with rent, scholarship applications, divorces, or other administrative procedures shown at a lower price than a flesh and blood lawyer.

Photo: Web DoNotPay

Browder describes DoNotPay as a chatbot that feeds on Artificial Intelligence to "help consumers fight against large corporations and solve their problems."

Photo: Web DoNotPay

DoNotPay's Ai was recently integrated as a plugin within ChatGPT. According to Browder, it allows users to search for information about themselves that is subject to legal challenges, for example, finding where their data is online and requesting its deletion.

Joshua Browder defended himself on Twitter by attacking Jay Edelson. "Mr. Edelson, who has made billions suing companies, is attacking us for 'unauthorized practice of law' and is seeking an injunction stopping any AI products."

Photo: Twitter - Joshua Browder

In an extensive thread, Joshua Browder, in addition to sharing the lawsuit, recalled that "in a recent Facebook deal, Edelson earned $97.5 million. A minority of consumers earned $375, while the majority, who couldn't fill out the forms, got zero."

Photo: Twitter - Joshua Browder

The creator of 'DoNotPay' assures that he will not be intimidated by "the most feared lawyer in Silicon Valley" since Edelson has carried out million-dollar lawsuits against Amazon, Google, or Apple.

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According to Reuters, generative artificial intelligence tools have gained traction in applications such as legal work, with the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI "chatbots" in recent months. But DoNotPay gained notoriety by other means.

A recent incident made prosecutors from the California State Bar Association take action against DoNotPay, even threatening with jail time for Browder after he suggested it might take the AI into a traffic court to feed arguments to a defendant through AirPods.

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The California State Bar Association argued that taking an AI robot to a physical courtroom is an unauthorized practice by law, even constituting a misdemeanor that can be punished with six months in jail.

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As for the defense against Edelson's class action lawsuit, the founder of 'DoNotPay' assures that he does not rule out "using our robot lawyer in the case."

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