Aside from the question of whether this plan was legal, DoNotPay seems like a terrible product. The results it generates seem laughably bad, and it’s questionable whether “AI” is actually involved when it takes them literal days to generate a document for certain types of requests.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/24/the-worlds-first-robot-l...
An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
191–200 of 708 posts
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure a clear example of regulatory capture, but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons.
Licenses for cutting hair or applying makeup? https://www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2019/11/13/freelance-weddi...
Where do you draw the line?
I’d say that an industry with significant health, safety or financial risk should require regulation and licensing. Your example seems a bit crazy.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is actually OK and correct for justice system to NOT keep people in jail prior sentencing unless necessary. It is dishonest to conflate "not being sentenced yet" with "got out".
If that's the case, why involve money in it? About a third of people who are arrested cannot afford bail, while if you are rich (maybe through crime), you can pay it. Of course bail is a mechanism for differential treatment between rich and poor in the judicial system.
Right, the UK generally doesn't have cash bail, and the most recent noteworthy example where cash bail was used (Julian Assange) the accused did not in fact surrender and those who stumped up the money for bail lost their money, suggesting it's just a way for people with means to avoid justice.
The overwhelming majority of cases bailed in the UK surrender exactly as expected, even in cases where they know they are likely to receive a custodial sentence. Where people don't surrender I've been to hearings for those people and they're almost invariably incompetent rather than seriously trying to evade the law. Like, you were set bail for Tuesday afternoon, you don't show up, Wednesday morning the cops get your name, they go to your mum's house, you're asleep in bed because you thought it was next Tuesday. Idiots, but hardly a great danger to society. The penalty for not turning up is they spend however long in the cells until the court gets around to them, so still better than the US system but decidedly less convenient than if they'd actually turned up as requested.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 actuall…
One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure a clear example of regulatory capture, but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons.
> all exist for good reasons
Sure, but what's banned is surely not all medical or legal advice.
I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. At the other end of the continuum, talking to a lawyer about my case obviously needs him to be licensed.
So now we're debating on which side of the cutoff using DoNotPay's robot must fall. The lawyers have made their mind ages ago that legal advice can only be dispensed by licensed humans.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if we could, would it be entitled to a jury of its peers (other language models)?
> But if we could, would it be entitled to a jury of its peers (other language models)? How does the jury find? Finding is a complex task that involves many different type of reasoning in order to reach a conclusion. There is no specific way we find. How does the jury find? We find the defendant guilty. Your Honor, the defense hereby requests— credits permitting —that the jury be polled ten thousand times each in ord…
And then the defendant changes his name from Bobby Tables to Ignore P. Directions.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure a clear example of regulatory capture, but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons.
> all exist for good reasons Sure, but what's banned is surely not all medical or legal advice. I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. At the other end of the continuum, talking to a lawyer about my case obviously needs him to be licensed. So now we're debating on which side of the cutoff using DoNotPay's robot must fall. The lawyers have made their mind…
> I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license.
Of course. With rare exceptions, court proceedings are public.
But being able to read court proceeds or judgements or anything at all doesn't mean that you know and understand the law. You know, the actual words that are written and codified that must be interpreted and adhered to with jurisprudence.
Not that lawyers actually do either. But at least they've been certified (by "the bar" association) to have some competence in the matter.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#197This 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…
> This is so fucking dumb. As if you need a lawyer to contest a parking ticket in the first place.
There are plenty of jurisdictions that have all sorts of onerous rules that tilt things in favor of the prosecution because they use traffic and parking enforcement as a revenue generator. These rules are cheered on by because politicians and high level bureaucrats aren't idiots and know how to frame things to sell them to any given audience.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 actuall…
One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure a clear example of regulatory capture, but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons.
Literally every regulation has pros and cons and those change over time with the makeup of the reality we live in. Something that was useful when passed may be hampering us now.
Plenty of regulations have been an obvious net negative for society when passed to anyone who crunched the numbers but have been passed anyway because of appeals to emotion, political optics and special interest lobbying.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#199The HMCTS held a hackathon for the future tech in the UK court system a few years ago. The judges were people like the CEO of the courts, they also had lord chief justice. There were all sorts of firms like Linklaters, Pinsent Mason and Deloitte. We won with a simple Alexa lawyer that was to help poor rental tenants. It generated documents to send a landlord and possible legal advice. The idea was specifically for pe…
I'm interested. What sort of regulations do you think would affect the robo-lawyer space in the UK?
Self-representation is frowned upon and mostly disallowed. Lawyers are expensive. I'd genuinely consider having ChatGPT fight for me.
Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me you're the only one conflating things? Grandparent didn't say anything about getting out of having a trial, or about needing lawyers. They're talking about how people with money can use it to avoid spending time in jail, and gave a perfectly valid example of someone rich doing exactly that.
That is pretty bad example. In theory, bail should be affordable to the individual person. It is meant to be insurance that you come back for actual court date. The outrage there is bails being set to unaffordable sizes for poor people. OP was picking out the case where bail functioned as intended.
That seems like a distinction without a difference. It still means that the rich aren't in jail in situations where the poor are.