Saturday, October 21, 2023

Two new comments on DoNotPay and AI legal services

 Long time readers of this blog will remember early this year I posted a series of stories discussing the saga of a company called DoNotPay which referred to itself as "the worlds first robot lawyer."  After some fanfare from the company's owner, it became clear the company could not deliver on its promises, there was a lot of criticism and commentary on the internet and eventually the company quit the practice of law, so to speak (meaning it decided not to offer legal services after all).  You can read the full saga, with lots of links to even more sources, in order, in my posts from January 29February 14February 16March 4March 10, and March 17.

I am writing about this again today to highlight two articles in the New York Legal Ethics Reporter.  The first one is called "DoNotPay Cases Underscore Hurdles For AI-Fueled Legal Help" which was originally published back in April in another publication.  In it, the author discusses some of the implications raised by two lawsuits brought against the company alleging unauthorized practice of law and consumer fraud.  You can read the article here.

The second article is called "The Rise of the Robot Lawyer? DoNotPay’s Legal AI Faces Several Challenges" and you can read it here.  It concludes that 

"[a]s AI continues to develop increasingly sophisticated research, issue-spotting and communication capabilities, it will likely become not only a useful, but even a necessary tool for lawyers in order to remain competitive in the legal services industry. However, as long as the reasons for having licensing structures and ethical obligations remain relevant, the return of the “robot lawyer” to replace the human one seems unlikely to happen anytime soon."

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