The San Francisco startup that touts itself as "the world's first robot lawyer" is being sued by a customer, who claims the company is practicing law without a license and provided him with shoddy services.
DoNotPay Inc. was founded by Thiel Fellow Joshua Browder and helps customers dispute parking tickets, file class-action lawsuits and other legal services, sometime through AI. The company has made headlines for attempting to get an AI chatbot to represent a client in court.
The plaintiff is being represented by the law firm Edelson, which is known for waging high profile legal battles against big tech firms, such as a $650 million class-action against Facebook.
Plaintiff Jonathan Faridian of Yolo County is suing DoNotPay in San Francisco Superior Court, claiming that he would not have signed up for the service if he had known that DoNotPay was not an actual certified lawyer. The lawsuit is seeking class-action status and demands redress to all subscribers of DoNotPay's services.
"DoNotPay respectfully denies the false allegations," DoNotPay said in a statement via email. "The named plaintiff has submitted dozens of successful cases to DoNotPay and the cases highlighted in this lawsuit are meritless. Furthermore, the case is being filed by a lawyer who has personally been paid hundreds of millions from class actions, so it’s unsurprising that he would accuse an AI of ‘unauthorized practice of law.’ We will defend ourselves vigorously."
The lawsuit also claims that DoNotPay had botched a number of services provided for Faridian, such as sending a blank form in place of a demand letter and inaccurately drafting an agency agreement for an online marketing business.
The suit also points to a number of negative reviews of the site by customers, including one who claimed to have ended up paying more for a parking ticket after utilizing DoNotPay's services.
"One customer, who posted an online review, used DoNotPay’s legal services to dispute two parking tickets," the lawsuit said. "According to his account, his fines actually increased because DoNotPay failed to respond to the ticket summons. The customer then cancelled his account, but DoNotPay continued to charge a subscription fee."
Browder also responded to the claims of the lawsuit via a Twitter thread, claiming that Edelson was one of the reasons he started DoNotPay in the first place because of how much money the firm took for itself from the Facebook judgment.
When asked via email about why Edelson was taking on DoNotPay, Jay Edelson, founder of Edelson PC, said "Josh's company isn't a small start up; a product that fundamentally doesn't work isn't a threat to the legal industry any more than Theranos was a threat to the healthcare industry. Nor do I take seriously anything Josh says about me. His only goal is to distract from the fact that he is selling snake oil."
