by - DoNotPay, which uses AI to deliver legal services, is facing a planned class action lawsuit.
- The complaint alleges that DoNotPay practices the law poorly and lacks a license.
- Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay, vowed to take action against the lawsuit, which he said had “no merit.”
DoNotPay, which bills itself as “the world’s first robot lawyer,” has been accused of practicing law without a license.
It is facing a proposed class action lawsuit filed March 3 by Chicago-based law firm Edelson and published Thursday on the website of the California State Superior Court for the County of San Francisco.
The complaint states: “Unfortunately, to its customers, DoNotPay is neither a robot nor a lawyer nor a law firm. DoNotPay does not have a law degree, is not licensed in any jurisdiction and is not supervised by an attorney.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Jonathan Faridian, who said he used DoNotPay to draft various legal documents, including collection letters, a small claims court complaint and a workplace discrimination complaint.
According to the complaint, Faridian believed he had purchased legal documents “from an attorney competent to provide them” but received “inferior” results.
DoNotPay claims to use artificial intelligence to help customers complete a range of legal services without having to hire a lawyer. It was founded in 2015 as an app to help customers fight parking tickets, but has since expanded its services. DoNotPay’s website claims it can help customers fight businesses, beat bureaucracy, find hidden money and “sue anyone”.
DoNotPay told Insider, “DoNotPay respectfully denies the false allegations.” It added, “We will vigorously defend ourselves.”
Joshua Browder, the CEO of DoNotPay, further said Twitter that the claims had “no merit” and pledged to fight the lawsuit.
He said DoNotPay is “not being bullied by America’s wealthiest class action attorney,” in a reference to Edelson founder Jay Edelson.
Browder said he was inspired to start DoNotPay in 2015 to take on attorneys like Edelson.
“It’s always the lawyers who win. So I wanted to do something about that by building the DoNotPay lawyer robot to give consumers the power to take on businesses themselves,” he said.
Jay Edelson told Insider, “We understood when we filed the lawsuit that Josh and DoNotPay would try in any way possible to distract from their wrongdoing. They attacked our client and are now attacking me.”
DoNotPay attracted attention earlier this year after Browder said it plans to use its artificial intelligence chatbot to counsel an accused in a traffic court. That plan was delayed after Browder said he received “threats from prosecutors” and feared jail time.
