DoNotPay legal chatbot now covers 1,000 areas of the law and creates additional chatbots for free
Joshua Browder. Photo by Tony Avelar.
DoNotPay, the legal chatbot that rose to fame as a tool for drivers to challenge traffic tickets without having to consult a lawyer, has dramatically expanded its capabilities.
Last week, DoNotPay creator Joshua Browder announced that the legal chatbot will cover nearly one thousand additional legal areas, including consumer rights, employment law and landlord-tenant disputes. Using natural language and a chat interface, the chatbot asks users a series of questions relating to their legal issues and generates a letter or form they can submit to the relevant authorities. DoNotPay, which has overturned 375,000 parking tickets as of this month, has previously undergone expansions to provide help for homeless people, as well as to handle asylum claims for refugees.
“I think the world is such an unfair place,” Browder, a 20 year-old student at Stanford University, told Mashable. “Credit card companies charge the poor more for the same thing. Employers don’t respect the right to maternity leave. Half of all parking tickets are dismissed in New York. Previously, the main way to correct this unfairness was to pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars to copy and paste a document. I hope DoNotPay gives more people a way to stand up for their rights.”
On Friday, Browder unveiled the latest update to DoNotPay: A service allowing anyone to create their own legal chatbots for free and with no technical knowledge required. According to a blog post in Medium, Browder said that individuals may fill out a form and submit a proposal for a chatbot to DoNotPay. If submitted before 11:59 p.m. PST on July 24, the chatbot would be generated within 24 hours and housed on the DoNotPay server.
“You can use your bot to save money within your business, provide a better experience to clients or improve access to justice,” he wrote. “Regardless, you will establish yourself as a leader in legal technology by having a cool bot link to share.”
