5 ms·

The big story for me here is: don't rely on your lawyers. Not unless they cost enough to rely on. Form a strong idea of your own case and your own defense. Even

by scandox 10y ago

The big story for me here is: don't rely on your lawyers. Not unless they cost enough to rely on. Form a strong idea of your own case and your own defense. Even if you're not representing yourself.

yomly 10y ago
Yep this is my takeaway from the story. I will not be sad when AI automates away the majority of the legal industry. Really really terrifying that one's access to justice is dependent on their access to finances. Luckily this guy was smart enough to actually represent himself - credit to him for that!
- Pigo 10y ago
  This has been my reason for being against the death penalty for many years. It's hard to justify when the OJ's of the world get a pass due to wealth or celebrity. I never thought of AI being used in this capacity. Seems like we'd live in The Day The Earth Stood Still world, giving the automatons the jurisdiction to meat out justice.
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    Hmm. This is actually an interesting application for AI. Is anyone working on this? There is a huge amount of case law that could be entered into the corpus.
    - mdpopescu 10y ago
      IBM's Watson is reading a ton of case law, as far as I know. Clio [1] also has some articles about AI and laws, if I recall correctly. [1] https://www.clio.com/ https://www.clio.com/
    - saint_fiasco 10y ago
      DoNotPay is a chatbot that can help people with simple legal cases like appealing parking tickets. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot-ai-lawyer-donotpay-parking-tickets-london-new-york https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot-a...
  - krallja 10y ago
    mete
    - Pigo 10y ago
      thakns :)
- restalis 10y ago
  "this guy was smart enough to actually represent himself" This was my shock in all this. I've created a personal profile for this guy on story's beginning and ended up with a whole new profile at the end. What a character development!
  - Grazester 10y ago
    Now who is buying the movie right?
- mywittyname 10y ago
  > I will not be sad when AI automates away the majority of the legal industry. It won't. Companies will just sell their specially-crafted AIs to law firms and governments for a lot of money. These AIs are currently used for identifying judges likely to be sympathetic toward your cause.
  - yomly 10y ago
    AI ought to lead to a disruption of the industry. Currently, the legal industry has managed to entrench itself using technicality which makes it difficult to replicate and leads to very expensive fees. When a software solution comes along - in principle it will be able to scale and therefore charge substantially lower fees while still earning competitive margin as compared to a traditional law firm. This will lead to a democratisation of access to justice. Think Amazon for retail, Netflix for TV or Spotify for music. (Maybe ignore the part about profits for now...)
rconti 10y ago
Don't rely on lawyers working for free.
vivekd 10y ago
Seems to be more of an issue with the lower court judge than the lawyers (from an article describing his original conviction) >Justice Leeming found Mr Moore acted "extremely foolishly" and dishonestly. He had known of the error and continued to borrow knowing he could not pay the money back. >"I must confess to some puzzlement at the apparent dismay of the prisoner and people who support him that he was found guilty," Judge Norrish had said, describing the Crown case as "irresistible". Seems like the judge knew exactly the facts and managed to come up with the wrong decision. It does sound like the lawyers weren't very good, but you also need a pretty bad judge to go in there and come out with the wrong decision despite knowing all the facts. Maybe the defense could have brought in more case law, but most judges don't read it except on appeal. Just to add, fraud is an intentional crime, this means the prosecutor must prove intent at every step, including that he had intent to obtain money from the bank through fraud. How the judge missed what a first year law student would have known just speaks to me about the incompetence of the judiciary. It's not like this man's lawyers failed to point that out to the trial judge.
- ticviking 10y ago
  A bit I think that's the point. He mentioned several times that the legal aid lawyers were worse than useless.

by scandox 10y ago

The big story for me here is: don't rely on your lawyers. Not unless they cost enough to rely on. Form a strong idea of your own case and your own defense. Even if you're not representing yourself.

yomly 10y ago

Yep this is my takeaway from the story. I will not be sad when AI automates away the majority of the legal industry. Really really terrifying that one's access to justice is dependent on their access to finances. Luckily this guy was smart enough to actually represent himself - credit to him for that!

Pigo 10y ago
This has been my reason for being against the death penalty for many years. It's hard to justify when the OJ's of the world get a pass due to wealth or celebrity. I never thought of AI being used in this capacity. Seems like we'd live in The Day The Earth Stood Still world, giving the automatons the jurisdiction to meat out justice.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  Hmm. This is actually an interesting application for AI. Is anyone working on this? There is a huge amount of case law that could be entered into the corpus.
  - mdpopescu 10y ago
    IBM's Watson is reading a ton of case law, as far as I know. Clio [1] also has some articles about AI and laws, if I recall correctly. [1] https://www.clio.com/ https://www.clio.com/
  - saint_fiasco 10y ago
    DoNotPay is a chatbot that can help people with simple legal cases like appealing parking tickets. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot-ai-lawyer-donotpay-parking-tickets-london-new-york https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot-a...
- krallja 10y ago
  mete
  - Pigo 10y ago
    thakns :)
restalis 10y ago
"this guy was smart enough to actually represent himself" This was my shock in all this. I've created a personal profile for this guy on story's beginning and ended up with a whole new profile at the end. What a character development!
- Grazester 10y ago
  Now who is buying the movie right?
mywittyname 10y ago
> I will not be sad when AI automates away the majority of the legal industry. It won't. Companies will just sell their specially-crafted AIs to law firms and governments for a lot of money. These AIs are currently used for identifying judges likely to be sympathetic toward your cause.
- yomly 10y ago
  AI ought to lead to a disruption of the industry. Currently, the legal industry has managed to entrench itself using technicality which makes it difficult to replicate and leads to very expensive fees. When a software solution comes along - in principle it will be able to scale and therefore charge substantially lower fees while still earning competitive margin as compared to a traditional law firm. This will lead to a democratisation of access to justice. Think Amazon for retail, Netflix for TV or Spotify for music. (Maybe ignore the part about profits for now...)

rconti 10y ago

Don't rely on lawyers working for free.

vivekd 10y ago

Seems to be more of an issue with the lower court judge than the lawyers (from an article describing his original conviction) >Justice Leeming found Mr Moore acted "extremely foolishly" and dishonestly. He had known of the error and continued to borrow knowing he could not pay the money back. >"I must confess to some puzzlement at the apparent dismay of the prisoner and people who support him that he was found guilty," Judge Norrish had said, describing the Crown case as "irresistible". Seems like the judge knew exactly the facts and managed to come up with the wrong decision. It does sound like the lawyers weren't very good, but you also need a pretty bad judge to go in there and come out with the wrong decision despite knowing all the facts. Maybe the defense could have brought in more case law, but most judges don't read it except on appeal. Just to add, fraud is an intentional crime, this means the prosecutor must prove intent at every step, including that he had intent to obtain money from the bank through fraud. How the judge missed what a first year law student would have known just speaks to me about the incompetence of the judiciary. It's not like this man's lawyers failed to point that out to the trial judge.

ticviking 10y ago
A bit I think that's the point. He mentioned several times that the legal aid lawyers were worse than useless.