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A 19-Year-Old Made A Free Robot Lawyer That Has Appealed $3M In Parking Tickets (businessinsider.com)
schwit1 writes: Hiring a lawyer for a parking-ticket appeal is not only a headache, but it can also cost more than the ticket itself. Depending on the case and the lawyer, an appeal -- a legal process where you argue out of paying the fine -- can cost between $400 to $900. But with the help of a robot made by British programmer Joshua Browder, 19, it costs nothing. Browder's bot handles questions about parking-ticket appeals in the UK. Since launching in late 2015, it has successfully appealed $3 million worth of tickets. He is cutting into the government trough and lawyers' jobs. That's a double whammy. How long is it before the bar association and government get automated lawyers disqualified?
In the UK, there is no monopoly on giving legal advice — only six things in the legal sphere require particular entitlement ("reserved activities"):
Anyone can give legal advice, so prohibiting just software from doing so would seem a very odd move.
The professional body for solicitors in England and Wales — the Law Society — recently released a report on "The Future Of Legal Services" and, at section 4.2, it talks through (very briefly) a number of the technology changes which will either be useful to solicitors or else challenging them.
Actually, "less lawyers" is grammatically fine. Ask a linguist (in this case, the co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language).
- Tal Cohen
it is sometimes illegal to use do-it-yourself kits
No... it is NOT unlawful to use them. However, the results of using the kits, might not be as intended, due to the differences in the law, and the ways some jurisdictions will interpret the templated materials.
It is possible, for example, that your template Will might not work as it is supposed to, or might not meet requirements for enforceability on certain intended parts of the document in a jurisdiction the document was not designed for.
Actually, "less lawyers" is grammatically fine.
It is grammatically correct, but the meaning is different. If you start with 10 lawyers, and you shoot one of them, then you have fewer lawyers. But if you start with 10 lawyers, and you starve them so they lose 20 pounds each, you now have less lawyers.
Personally, I am okay with either shooting them or starving them.