Chatbot That Helps Users Appeal Parking Tickets Comes To U.S.

A chatbot called DoNotPay that helps users appeal parking tickets for free in the U.K. is now available in the United States.

According to news from Business Insider, the chatbot — which its founder has described as one of the world’s first robot lawyers — overturned more than $3 million parking fines in a few months in the U.K. The lawyer bot became available in all 50 U.S. states this week.

Here’s how it works: Once you sign into DoNotPay’s site, a chat screen pops up and begins asking questions to learn about the case and determine the correct application. It then gives detailed instructions on how to fill out the application, which you then mail to court.

The robot lawyer can also help with delayed or canceled flights and payment-protection insurance (PPI) claims. And while this free lawyer cannot physically argue a parking ticket case in front of a judge, it can potentially save users a lot of money — an appeal with a human lawyer can cost between $400 to $900.

The lawyer bot is based on a conversation algorithm, using keywords, pronouns and word order to understand a user’s issue. The more people that use the bot, the more intelligent it becomes, and the algorithm can quickly analyze large amounts of data while improving itself in the process. DoNotPay has helped win appeals for 375,000 parking tickets in the last two years.

“As a 19-year-old, I have coded the entirety of the robot on my own, and I think it does a reasonable job of replacing parking lawyers,” said the free lawyer bot’s founder Joshua Browder. “I know there are thousands of programmers with decades more experience than me working on similar issues.”