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>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the

• brendanashworth 4y ago
  Working within the existing system, though, is typically the fastest way to address the grievance. AI is probably the most scalable approach to competent counsel, far easier (given ChatGPT) than training new lawyers and convincing them to become public defenders.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    AI will give crappy representation to those that can't afford it who will then lose from those that can. This isn't the fastest way to address this particular grievance, it is the fastest way to ensure it won't get addressed at all. The fact that you can't get a half decent lawyer to represent you unless you are willing to go bankrupt isn't a feature, it's a bug and this just further increases that divide.
• hackerlight 4y ago
  True for wealthy countries, but in really poor countries access to things like medical care or legal services isn't a policy issue, there is a legitimate scarcity. Barring foreign aid, the only two alternatives are no access to these services, versus access to an automated version that's worse than a human but better than nothing. So we're not dealing in a world of perfect solutions, just less bad solutions, which is fine. Note that I'm speaking generally, not about the particular service this article is about.
• paxys 4y ago
  I disagree. Technology is the perfect solution for problems like these. So many societal issues today arise because systems developed centuries ago cannot keep up with a population that has grown exponentially since then. Tech's core feature is being able to scale. There will be more and more systemic reliance on automation and AI as time goes on, since that's the only sensible way out.
  • krsdcbl 4y ago
    I think that's utopian, all i see in this story is a future where some people can afford expert defendants (who'll be assisted by AI but much more effective than AI alone), while poor people are stuck with representing themselves with an app - and the government deems the problem solved, further eroding laws that guarantee legal support.
    • in3d 4y ago
      I mean, if the AI app is better than public defenders, it’s still progress. Rich people can already afford experts, so the inequality would be lessened.
      • gnicholas 4y ago
        * public defenders The defendant is the person on trial.
        • in3d 4y ago
          Thanks, fixed
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • Aerroon 4y ago
    But the problem with law isn't the number of people, it's with the number of laws/binding contracts. If the US government can't even count the number of possible ways you can commit a crime then how is any of it supposed to work?
• hef19898 4y ago
  Nitpick: From a glimpse at the article, I think the defendant will represent himself, the "AI lawyer" running on the defendants smartphone will just give him hints. Not sure how it can be acceptable to have a third party listen into court proceedings in real time through a smartphone, but ok.
  • g_p 4y ago
    > The AI lawyer tells the defendant what to say in real-time, through headphones. Yeah - and I wonder what will happen if it starts telling the defendant to say things which aren't grounded and rooted in fact, or which contradict things they previously said or submitted in writing. Not sure a generative model is the best way to keep people clear of obvious cases of perjury/lying under oath etc.
    • djhn 4y ago
      Yes. If its one thing we've seen ChatGPT and the like struggling with, it's internal consistency and keeping the whole text coherent and tied to some fundamental overarching thread or strategy. To play devil's advocate though, would a layman without AI help be any better at navigating this?
      • g_p 4y ago
        Answer - probably not. But courts are very likely (in my view) to take a very very dim view of the introduction of some kind of barrack-room "AI lawyer". It will slow things down by introducing potentially spurious arguments which wouldn't have been made by either a represented party, or unrepresented party. Given the courts are a public service, this isn't necessarily zero sum - unrepresented parties do take longer in court, but I very strongly suspect in the life of a whole case, parties with an aspiring barrack-room AI lawyer will take up more court time. Especially if their argument loses coherency or starts to contradict itself.
        • phpisthebest 4y ago
          This is not an AI problem, I have seen more than a few time Lawyers contradict in different parts of a case. One example off the top of my head is when Lawyers attempt aurge that social media platforms are both publishers and platforms so they can not be held liable at all under any circumstance
• nathias 4y ago
  political solutions are a bandage until the technical solutions are invented
• renewiltord 4y ago
  Tech has solved[0] lots of social issues: - access to general knowledge: Wikipedia - safe transport for women at night: Find My Friends / Uber+Lyft - access to government data: opendata initiatives, a plethora of cadastral map services I'm going to say the obvious thing everyone is thinking. Everyone who has ever said "this is the core issue: you're trying to solve a social issue with technology" has never solved a social issue _or_ a technological issue and has no idea how to do it. 0: obviously I must clarify for this audience that "solved" in this context means that it has reduced the prevalence of some problem below some low base rate
  • m4jor 4y ago
    >- safe transport for women at night This was also solved using non-tech and hundreds of years ago. It's called a firearm.
    • notch656c 4y ago
      Unfortunately the patriarchy has been clamping down on this to make it more difficult for women, who often have lower incomes, to get firearms that would better equalize their self defense capabilities. They impose FOID, licensing, and various other barriers to carry that are less affordable to women.
    • renewiltord 4y ago
      Firearms are literally technology. If you believe what you say you do, then you believe that this social problem was solved with technology.
• vt100 4y ago
  Tesla was a "forcing function" that caused other car manufacturers to build EVs. AI lawyer technology may be the catalyst needed to trigger reform of the legal system. It's clear that up until now there has been no reform forthcoming.
  • cartoonworld 4y ago
    It will catalyze a new revenue stream for LexisNexis in the form of highly priced AI legal research "AI"
  • HPsquared 4y ago
    I think it's more likely that AI systems will act as a crutch, enabling even more overcomplicated procedures to grow and persist, until it's impossible for any mere human to understand.
• randallsquared 4y ago
  With technology or a product that people will voluntarily pay for, you can make a specific, measurable, concrete difference in a bounded timeframe. If you fail, you can be sure to do so without causing immense suffering across a whole society in the way that government actions sometimes do when they go wrong. If you could "fix the underlying issue" in a permanent way without unintended consequences, that would be better, but no one knows how to do that reliably using politics, and the failure modes of airbnb, uber, and tesla are gentler than the failure modes of politics.
• birracerveza 4y ago
  This is the core issue I have with comments like this: they refuse to try solving social issues with technology. I can understand why not business, but every time a solution involving tech pops up, there's immediately people dismissing it with a comment saying you can't solve societal issues with tech, with no proposed alternative solutions either. Ok, you don't want to solve it with tech, how then?
  • phpisthebest 4y ago
    This is the core issue I have with comments like this: they refuse to try solving social issues with business. Every time a solution involving business pops up, there's immediately people dismissing it with a comment saying you can't solve societal issues with business, with no proposed alternative solutions either. Ok, you don't want to solve it with business, how then? A an aside business has been shown to be the best path to solving societal problems, from medicine, to poverty business is that path. Leave government to solve a problem and as the old saying goes you would get the best iron lung money could buy but you would never get a polio vaccine.
    • birracerveza 4y ago
      lol. I agree with you, but I also can understand why people may think that profiting from solving a social problem could create a slew of other issues, such as incentivizing the proliferation of that same social problem so that solving it can turn a profit. It's just business! On the other hand I don't understand this hatred towards tech, aside from "it's new, and I don't understand it, therefore it's bad".
      • phpisthebest 4y ago
        >>such as incentivizing the proliferation of that same social problem so that solving it can turn a profit. It's just business! The ironic thing is we see this more with government than business. Social programs almost always NEVER solve the social problem they just manage it. This is to ensure a voting base is dependent on the government and gives the political class levers to pull to ensure their control and domination. Government does not want to fix problems, they want to manage them
• PurpleRamen 4y ago
  How is this a social problem? Lawyers are expensive, because education takes time, motivation and competence. So it's an economical problem, something the state can't easily solve. Technology can make an impact here and sidestep or even ignore those problems.
  • phpisthebest 4y ago
    There are multiple facets to this question depending on the type of law you are talking about. Criminal, Civil, Contract, Torts, Family, etc. In many areas of law I would agree with your statement, however with criminal law I have always felt that many governments have been in the habit of criminalizing poverty in many ways. Personally I think it should be mandated that at a minimum for every $1 given to a prosecutor's office to prosecute criminal cases, $0.50 should be given to public defenders (ideally $1 for $1 but I would take $0.50) currently is more like $0.10.
  • ranger47 4y ago
    Can it be a socio-economic problem? Do universities that these lawyers study at really need to be as expensive as they are?
    • PurpleRamen 4y ago
      Education is always expensive, in every country, because it takes time. US-Universities are just exceptional expensive for whatever reasons. But time is something that this technology can remove for this cases, so I would say it still remains an economical problem. Though, the ability to use the technology might come down to a social problem. Because it still needs a certain level of education and competence to use the technology. Just significant less than visiting a university for a whole decade or so.
  • naasking 4y ago
    > So it's an economical problem, something the state can't easily solve. The state can simplify the law and eliminate or stop prosecuting laws that don't directly harm people, thus reducing the demand for lawyers. It's not just an economical problem.
• perihelions 4y ago
  It could also make things much worse, due to Jevon's paradox. The way rich societies throw away tons of food because it isn't scarce, or how modern software is slower than ever because hardware is too cheap. If half-baked AI's lower *some* of the costs of law practice, we might end up wasting more resources than ever before fighting against the proliferating volume of it. See, the sword cuts both ways. Prosecutors' office would run more efficiently, would pursue much larger caseloads (lower priority ones) with fewer employees and less time. Civil lawsuits could become much cheaper to file; trolling could expand from niches (like patent law) to much broader, more socially-impactful forms of warfare. The financial risk/reward equation is what deters this, and lowering the costs means eliminating the deterrence. And imagine regulatory compliance costs, when regulators feel emboldened to design regimes so elaborate they themselves don't understand them, because they have AI assistants capable of parsing them.
  • pontifier 4y ago
    I'm imagining a dystopian future where everyone wears a legal advice headset that is constantly whispering to them about things they are doing, or need to change to avoid a lawsuit. Kind of like a continual game of twister where if you misstep, all the watching legal AIs jump on you, immediately serving you electronically, with court dates pre-scheduled and all the evidence they need to win the case already submitted.
    • thrtythreeforty 4y ago
      Sounds like something out of Accelerando.
  • enkid 4y ago
    Is modern software really slower or are we just noticing when it is slow because we're used to it being fast? I am genuinely asking.
• pibechorro 4y ago
  Its a state created problem and you expect them to solve it? Private entities are the way these problems are always solved efficiently. Cant wait for lawyers to be obsolete personally.
  • KaiserPro 4y ago
    So wait, lawyers are state entities?
    • SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      Public defenders are state entities. The state failing to fund its justice system to guarantee speedy trial, competent representation, etc. is a state problem, not a problem of technology.
• jojobas 4y ago
  You can represent yourself in court in many cases, the problem is that you will likely fail as you won't be very good at case law, abiding by all sorts of conventions and therefore lose. If AI can help you make properly referenced arguments it might well solve a societal problem to a degree.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hammock 4y ago
  > this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the state. Who's to say DoNotPay won't eventually sell this service to the state, in service of the public interest in accord with the Sixth Amendment? In that light, it may be a tool worth developing
  • s3p 4y ago
    me. I'll call it right now. This will never be purchased by the US government.
• rayiner 4y ago
  I think it’s exactly the opposite. People broadly overestimate the effect of social and political solutions while overlooking the impact of technological and economic changes. For example, why did gender roles suddenly change in the western world in the mid 20th century? Was it because people wrote books and passed laws? Or was it because the economy shifted from physically demanding agricultural and industrial work to a services and knowledge work economy? I’d argue that the typical course is for social change to follow technological and economic change. Similarly, the the problem with representation of defendants in the legal system is technological and economic, not social. It’s expensive to have a credentialed person spend lots of time working on behalf of someone else. That’s true for everything from auto repair to law. The social and legal system is simply responding to that economic reality. The public is willing to spend so much money to protect the rights of the accused and there is only so much you can accomplish by haranguing them into wanting to spend more money. By contrast, if you dramatically reduce the cost of providing the accused with a defense, you dramatically change the landscape of the social and political issues.