In
2015,
tech
twerp
Joshua
Browder
founded
his
company
DoNotPay.com
from
his
dorm
room
at
Stanford.
The
story,
perhaps
apocryphal,
was
that
he
got
so
many
parking
tickets
that
he
invented
a
chatbot
to
scour
local
ordinances
and
interface
with
municipal
authorities.
“I
couldn’t
afford
to
pay
these
tickets
as
a
young
person,
so
I
became
a
legal
expert
about
all
the
reasons
why
people
could
get
out
of
parking
tickets,”
said
the
son
of
hedge
fund
manager
Bill
Browder.
In
short
order,
young
Josh
was
induced
to
drop
out
of
college
and
join
Peter
Thiel’s
brotherhood
of
very
special
boys
to
whom
the
rules
do
not
apply.
Soon
he
was
swimming
in
vats
of
VC
cash
from
the
likes
of
Andreessen
Horowitz
and
Coatue
Management.
The
pressure
was
on
to
come
up
with
the
next
big
thing
and
prove
them
all
right.
And
what
he
came
up
with
was
an
AI
chatbot
that
he
dubbed
“the
world’s
first
robot
lawyer.”
“Lawyers
are
charging
hundreds
of
dollars
an
hour
for
copying
and
pasting
a
few
documents,
and
our
vision
at
DoNotPay
is
to
make
the
law
free,”
the
website
said,
promising
glibly
to
generate
demand
letters,
defamation
C&Ds,
divorce
settlements,
restraining
orders,
trusts,
and
even
lawsuits
in
small
claims
court.
Browder’s
company
DoNotPay
charged
a
monthly
subscription
to
access
his
stable
of
bots,
and,
to
gin
up
publicity,
he
tweeted
that
he’d
pay
an
attorney
to
wear
an
earpiece
and
let
his
bot
argue
a
case
at
the
US
Supreme
Court.
This
was
perhaps
a
strategic
error,
since
it
simultaneously
attracted
the
attention
of
every
lawyer
on
social
media
and
highlighted
Browder’s
complete
lack
of
understanding
of
LAW,
HOW
DOES
IT
GO?
It
also
implied
that
the
young
CEO
was
getting
high
on
his
own
supply,
as
it
were,
and
failing
to
consult
any
actual
lawyers.
(Spoiler
Alert!)
Browder
soon
beat
a
hasty
retreat,
vowing
that
he’d
try
to
refrain
from
practicing
law
without
a
license,
and
congratulating
himself
for
being
so
good
at
this
whole
CEO
thing
that
he
knew
when
to
course
correct.
But
while
the
internet
mostly
got
bored
and
wandered
off,
the
Federal
Trade
Commission
did
not.
And
this
morning
it
announced
a
settlement
with
DoNotPay,
wherein
Browder
agreed
that
his
company
would
cough
up
$193,000
and
promise
to
go
forth
and
sin
no
more.
Looks
like
they
DO
pay
after
all!
As
with
everything
involving
Josh
Browder,
the
FTC complaint
is
hilarious.
And
while
the
company
was
making
grandiose
representations
about
the
quality
of
its
product,
DoNotPay
consulted
zero
attorneys
who
could
have
told
it
that
the
documents
its
bots
were
spitting
out
were
drek.
DoNotPay
did
not
test
whether
the
Service’s
law-related
features
operated
like
a
human
lawyer.
DoNotPay
has
developed
the
Service
based
on
technologies
that
included
a
natural
language
processing
model
for
recognizing
statistical
relationships
between
words,
chatbot
software
for
conversing
with
users,
and
an
Application
Programming
Interface
(“API”)
with
OpenAI’s
ChatGPT.
None
of
the
Service’s
technologies
has
been
trained
on
a
comprehensive
and
current
corpus
of
federal
and
state
laws,
regulations,
and
judicial
decisions
or
on
the
application
of
those
laws
to
fact
patterns.
DoNotPay
employees
have
not
tested
the
quality
and
accuracy
of
the
legal
documents
and
advice
generated
by
most
of
the
Service’s
law-related
features.
DoNotPay
has
not
employed
attorneys
and
has
not
retained
attorneys,
let
alone
attorneys
with
the
relevant
legal
expertise,
to
test
the
quality
and
accuracy
of
the
Service’s
law-related
features.
Better
late
than
never,
Browder
opted
not
to
use
a
bot
to
interface
with
the
FTC,
instead
hiring
counsel
from
Wilson
Sonsini,
which
also
represented
him
in
a
recently
settled
consumer
class
action
suit
in
California.
The
FTC
alleges
that
DoNotPay
made
false
claims
and
engaged
in
unfair
or
deceptive
acts
or
practices
in
violation
of
Section
5(a)
of
the
Federal
Trade
Commission
Act.
But
interestingly
FTC
Chair
Lina
Khan
and
Commissioner
Melissa
Holyoak
put
out
a
joint
statement
suggesting
that
Browder’s
real
sin
was
destroying
consumers’
belief
in
the
power
of
AI,
including
with
respect
to
generating
legal
documents.
For
consumers
to
benefit
from
AI
(as
with
any
technology),
they
must
be
able
to
trust
the
claims
that
companies
make
about
its
capabilities.
Importantly,
this
settlement
does
not
suggest
that
consumers
should
use
expensive
professional
services,
or
that
companies
should
avoid
offering
innovative
products
that
reduce
the
need
for
high-priced
lawyers.
The
misdeeds
of
a
few
bad
apples
shouldn’t
dampen
pro-consumer
innovation.
Indeed,
we
are
hopeful
that
AI
will
give
consumers
access
to
many
types
of
services
at
lower
cost
and
with
greater
convenience
than
has
previously
been
available.
As
ATL
editor
Joe
Patrice
has
pointed
out,
no
lawyer
is
going
to
take
a
traffic
court
case,
and
having
a
reliable
AI
tool
that
walks
normal
people
through
the
process
and
points
to
potential
defenses
is
a
net
positive.
Perhaps
Browder’s
sin
was
flying
too
close
to
the
sun.
Or
maybe
he’s
just
a
tech
douchebag
who
got
handed
a
mountain
of
cash
and
told
he
was
smarter
than
everyone
else
so
he
didn’t
need
to
follow
the
rules,
and
he
got
what
was
coming
to
him.
Liz
Dye lives
in
Baltimore
where
she
produces
the
Law
and
Chaos substack and podcast.