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An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

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Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#121

Post by scatters »

aaaaaA3 wrote: post #96
RandomLensman wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure, sometimes a doctor might know more than you on a prescription or their educated guess on which antibiotic is appropriate is better than yours, for example.

Hey, I definitely agree. On the other hand, every time I've gone to the doctor with a cold, I've always been prescribed the same antibiotic after basically no examination. If I had some new, unexpected symptoms, I'd probably want to at least call the doctor.

You do realize that antibiotics are completely ineffective against a cold? You're wrecking your digestive system and risking antibiotic resistance for nothing. If your doctor is prescribing antibiotics, either they're a terrible doctor, or they're a bad doctor and you're a worse patient.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#122

Post by taylorius »

robertlagrant wrote: post #13
monkeydust wrote: post #4

Hardly surprising, you try to automate lawyers they are going to get litigious.

I think lawyers will be at pains to demonstrate how laughably bad the AI is when pushed. I don't blame them.

That's stage two. If the blanket ban-via-threatening-letters doesn't work.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#123

Post by dools »

This is so fucking dumb. As if you need a lawyer to contest a parking ticket in the first place.

The last time I got a parking ticket I had photos and documentary evidence that I should not have been liable.

After I lodged my intent to contest the fine, the council sent me a letter saying how they win 97% of cases and I should just pay up now to avoid the risk.

I called bullshit and turned up on my court date. There were a bunch of cases heard before mine, 3 of which were parking violations.

In all 3 cases the defendants received a default judgement because the council didn’t even bother to send someone to fight the case.

My case got the same result.

Maybe I would hire a lawyer to sue the council for intimidation over the letter they sent, but I sure as hell wouldn’t use an AI lawyer for that!

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#124

Post by rcme »

mandmandam wrote: post #99
smorrebrod wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's what you're talking about but you can sue your lawyer for professional negligence if they didn't do their job properly.

This isn't quite true. You can only sue for negligence if you can prove you were going to win without the negligence. And it will cost you ten thousand dollars just to begin the process. So if there's any doubt that you're going to win - any at all - your own $600/hr lawyer can flat out fuck you over. And there isn't a fucking thing you can do about it.

> You can only sue for negligence if you can prove you were going to win without the negligence. And it will cost you ten thousand dollars just to begin the process.

That's not true. For instance, missing a filing deadline is considered professional negligence, regardless of the strength of the case.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#125

Post by notahacker »

eloisant wrote: post #38
PostOnce wrote: post #2

You can't just start practicing law without a license, you'll ruin somebody's life; they'll assume you, or the computer, knows what is going on, when in fact you just want Free Dollars. I don't want Dr. iPad Joe who spent a grand total of 15 minutes learning how to use ChatGPT making legal, medical, engineering, or other important decisions for me or the place I live. Now, I am of course free to use ChatGPT as a priv…

I see that as a tool, I'm not sure why it's presented as "AI being the lawyer". You're allowed to represent yourself in court, most of the time (and for parking ticket I'm pretty sure) you have no obligation to have a lawyer. Now if you want to pay for a tool that helps you represent yourself better, why not?

> I see that as a tool, I'm not sure why it's presented as "AI being the lawyer".

The hero element for the product's home page describes it as "The World's First Robot Lawyer". Twice.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#126

Post by worthless-trash »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #28
pocketarc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating a few different things. Being able to pay bail so you don't have to be in jail while you wait for your trial doesn't get you out of having a trial, and has nothing to do with needing lawyers. What the parent was referring to is the fact that if AI starts to consume the low-end (starting with traffic tickets), actual lawyers for trials will become even more expensive, and thus poorer people will actu…

> the fact that if AI starts to consume the low-end (starting with traffic tickets), actual lawyers for trials will become even more expensive That should only happen if lawyers become very niche or if those low end cases are subsidizing trials. I doubt the former, and the latter means the situation is already bad and mainly just the type of unfairness would change.

Supply vs demand, won't there just be more supply availble for other cases ?

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#127

Post by msla »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #55
msla wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recording court proceedings is already a big no in many countries around the world. You certainly can't have someone able to challenge the official record of what happened.

The official record taken word for word by the stenographer? Why would you need to challenge that? Are you implying something that's more than one in a million?

> Why would you need to challenge that?

That's precisely the question, yes.

> Are you implying something that's more than one in a million?

Court cases aren't about the common occurrences.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#128

Post by iamu985 »

When I first heard of DoNotPay, I was honestly impressed by the idea of having an AI fighting cases in court (simple cases that is). But after a few minutes or so when I actually started contemplating the reality, my impression about it got dimmer and dimmer. In my honest opinion, I really don't think it is necessary that AI should be introduced in court systems especially to fight cases. There might be other implementations and other problems for it to solve but not for this. So, I don't disagree with the CEO saying that "court laws are outdated and they need to embrace future that is AI." But embracing can be done in other ways than this for instance I did read about a startup that uses AI to read law related documents or something similar to that don't remember its name though. That was quite interesting as well!

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#129

Post by xienze »

notahacker wrote: post #119
xienze wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the state can't just let ordinary folk hang themselves with cheap half-baked "solutions". Why hasn't the practice of self-representation been banned then? It's almost without exception a surefire way to hang oneself in a court room.

Self representation doesn't involve some mountebank selling you a "robot lawyer that will get you off your parking ticket" solution

So what if I just decided of my own accord to use ChatGPT and train it myself? Or someone on GitHub made a fully trained version of it available in a Docker container, for free?

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#130

Post by parsimo2010 »

dools wrote: post #123

This is so fucking dumb. As if you need a lawyer to contest a parking ticket in the first place. The last time I got a parking ticket I had photos and documentary evidence that I should not have been liable. After I lodged my intent to contest the fine, the council sent me a letter saying how they win 97% of cases and I should just pay up now to avoid the risk. I called bullshit and turned up on my court date. There…

The issue here (as with many disruptive tech companies), is the regulatory system. It is illegal in most states to give legal advice if you are not licensed to practice law. If DoNotPay isn't licensed to practice law in California, they can't do this. And unless they have a plan to either get licensed in many states, or somehow change the law, then their business model sucks. It sounds to me that they haven't actually solved the real problem with the $28 million in investment money they took. The particular AI tech will have very little bearing on the company's eventual success or failure.

The real problem isn't the complexity of the arguments in most cases (as your story shows). The real problem is the complexity of the regulatory system. Tesla has to deal with the dealership rules in several states. Fintech companies that handle real money have to deal with financial regulations or else they are smuggling money. Biotech startups have to follow the FDA rules or they are just drug dealers. Legal advice companies will have to deal with the rules too- and their opponents are particularly challenging.

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