British programer Joshua Browder is helping people save a lot of money on legal fees with his latest project — the world’s first robot lawyer. The 19-year-old developed a free service that allows users to ask any kind of legal question and receive relevant answers autogenerated by robots.

Browder first started the project last summer as a free website to help people appeal unfair parking tickets. He came up with the idea after getting a series of tickets himself for “trivial reasons.” Having wasted several hours on writing appeals to these tickets, he realized that many people do not have the time, legal knowledge or even the energy to appeal. So he decided to create an automatic appeal generator, using previously successful letters as a template.

He aptly named the service DoNotPay, given that the legal fees involved in challenging tickets could mount up to sizable amounts between US$400 to US$900.

DoNotPay was a huge success, and the tech genius has now gone a step further with the website, converting it into a full-fledged robot lawyer equipped to help with a range of legal issues.

“I realized that the best way to help people would be to create a computer program that could talk to users, generate appeals, and answer questions like a human,” he said. “The robot can currently handle parking ticket appeals, payment protection insurance (PPI) claims and delayed flights/trains. It can also answer some general legal questions like ‘I can’t afford my ticket. What do I do?’”

“I am ultimately looking to give it as much functionality as possible in the spirit of trying to replace the large group of exploitative lawyers,” he added.

To use the service, users need to go to the website donotpay.co.uk and sign up for free.

Once signed in, the robot will ask the user a series of questions about their situation. When it has collected enough information, and if the person has legal grounds for an appeal, the robot will then generate a letter for the person to use.

英国程序员约书亚•布劳德只有19岁，他的新项目 — 世界上第一个机器人律师，能帮人们省下不少法律费用。用户询问的任何法律问题，机器人程序都可以自动生成相关答案，而且此项服务是免费的。

这个项目去年夏天开始启动，当时布劳德只是想做一个免费网站，帮人们对不公平的停车罚单进行上诉。他萌生这个想法是因为他自己就因“无关紧要的原因”被开了一连串的罚单。在浪费了几个小时写上诉书后，他意识到很多人并没有时间、法律知识、精力对这些罚单进行上诉。所以他决定做一个自动申诉生成器，以之前成功的申诉书为模板。鉴于对罚单进行上诉的法律费用可以达到400至900美元之多，他恰当地给这项服务命名为“无需付钱”。

“无需付钱”取得了巨大的成功，这个科技天才在网站的基础上又向前迈出了一步，把网站转化成一个受过训练的机器人律师，可以帮助人们解决许多法律问题。他说：“我意识到帮助人们的最好方式就是创造一个电脑程序，这个程序可以与人对话、生成上诉书、回答问题，就像人一样。

目前，这个机器人可以处理停车罚单上诉问题、付款保证保险（PPI）索赔问题和飞机、火车延误问题。它还可以解答一些基本的法律问题，比如‘我付不起罚单，怎么办？’”

他还说：“秉着设法避免被大批律师剥削的精神，我总是尽可能地给它多添加功能”。使用这项服务，用户需要到网站donotpay.co.uk免费注册。注册成功后，机器人会向他们询问一系列有关自身情况的问题。收集到足够信息后，如果用户的申诉有法律依据，机器人就会生成上诉书。

(Chinadaily.com.cn)

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【恰当地】qiàdàng de aptly exactly suitable, appropriate

    【有资质的】yǒu zīzhì de full-fledged having full status or rank