The homeless have a new ally in Joshua Browder, the
19-year-old wiz Stanford student who created
DoNotPay.
Browder is expanding the capabilities of the service to include helping the homeless. The free robot lawyer has already appealed US$4 million in parking tickets, according to
The Telegraph.
Browder's inspiration to enhance the capabilities of DoNotPay came when he was emailed by a woman who said she was afraid to face the end of her hospital treatment because she had been evicted from her home and had nowhere to go.
Browder noticed that he was being messaged a lot about evictions and repossessions, many by people in the UK, according to
The Washington Post. The student then worked with volunteer lawyers to make DoNotPay capable of helping with public housing claims in the UK
.
Just like the process the robot lawyer undertakes when tackling parking ticket appeals, it asks its users questions to determine how a legal document can be crafted for each specific case to maximise chances of the request to be granted.
DoNotPay is a free service and all people need to do to use it is to register to get an account.
According to
The Washington Post, Browder plans to expand the housing aid feature to outside of the UK soon.
Nonetheless, the same report noted comments from Shelly Nortz from the New York City-based advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless who said using robot lawyers for processes like housing aid applications can be “incredibly flawed”.
She said that nuances such as immigration status, mental illness and criminal history may not be fully taken into account by an automated system.
However, Browder believes that DoNotPay provides otherwise unavailable option that levels the playing field, he told the publication.
