The next time you get a parking ticket, let the robot lawyer handle it for you.
A chatbot created by a 19-year-old London native studying at Stanford University has saved hundreds of thousands of people from paying their parking tickets in New York City and the United Kingdom.
DoNotPay, Joshua Browder’s “robot lawyer” creation, took on 250,000 parking ticket cases in London and won 160,000 of them, appealing more than $4 million in charges with a 64% win rate.
After its success, Browder brought the chatbot to New York in April, choosing the city for how much it rakes in from parking tickets.
“I think New York is the biggest crookery of them all,” Browder told the Daily News.
Parking tickets have been the city’s biggest source of cash in fines, collecting $565 million in 2015.
The bot works by asking users several questions about why they believe they shouldn’t pay for a parking ticket, and then generates an appeal letter to send to the court.
Since its launch in New York, Browder said his chatbot has fought about 25,000 parking tickets and won 10,000 cases, saving almost $1 million for New Yorkers.
More than half of the requests have come from drivers in Manhattan.
He’s hoping to continue tweaking the appeals for a higher win rate, meeting with lawyers in the city to work around the legalese.
“I hope it can really take off in New York like it has in the UK,” the teen said.
These letters are typically expensive to have drafted, as some lawyers can charge up to $100 to help fight a $150 ticket, Browder told the News.
The robot lawyer’s fees: $0.
Browder said he wants to keep his creation free, as a public service.
“I think the people that are getting parking tickets and can’t afford them are the most vulnerable in our society,” he told The News.
Browder said he got the idea to create the bot after having to handle about 30 of his own parking tickets when he was 18, and then started using it to help his friends and family too.
He said lawyers have been receptive to his idea for helping them handle a mundane chore, but are usually confused when the coder wants to keep it free.
The Stanford student hopes to expand his program to Seattle in the future.
The robot lawyer is also working to help people get compensation when their flights are delayed.
His other project is helping users who are HIV positive clear up any legal issues that come with disclosing their status within 30 seconds in an anonymous record.
