
AI Law Firm Offering $2.7 Legal Letters Wins 'Landmark' Approval (ft.com) 32
English regulators have approved a new law firm that uses AI instead of lawyers to offer services for as little as $2.67, as the technology continues to disrupt industries from finance to accounting. From a report: Garfield AI, which was founded by a former London litigator and a quantum physicist, is an online tool that allows businesses and individuals such as tradespeople to chase debts owed to them at a substantially lower cost than the average lawyer's fees. Its AI assistant guides claimants through the small claims court process, including creating "polite chaser" letters for $2.67 and filing documents such as claim forms for $67, and can also produce arguments for claimants to use at trial.
AI models are increasingly encroaching on legally sensitive tasks in high-paying sectors such as law and finance, potentially undercutting fees in high-volume work. Garfield received approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the legal regulator for England and Wales, in March, in a move the latter hailed as a "landmark moment" for the industry.
AI models are increasingly encroaching on legally sensitive tasks in high-paying sectors such as law and finance, potentially undercutting fees in high-volume work. Garfield received approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the legal regulator for England and Wales, in March, in a move the latter hailed as a "landmark moment" for the industry.
A dangerous game (Score:3)
Possibly (Score:2)
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"But you can also respond to a $1.70 legal notice with your own $1.70 legal notice. "
The problem is that it won't be "a" $1.70 legal notice. It'll be a thousand, or ten thousand. An individual can't respond in kind.
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At that point, you take all the letters and dump them on a Judge's desk. They'll likely be annoyed at the one sending all them and take measures.
Harassment is a thing.
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Why would someone receive 10,000 AI lawyer's letters from (presumably) 10,000 bullying corporations? I don't understand the circumstance you're envisaging
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I'm envisioning 10,000 AI lawyer's letters from one corporation. Each setting forth a different complaint.
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But you can also respond to a $1.70 legal notice with your own $1.70 legal notice.
And by doing so, you admit you read the letter, that your address is accurate, and perhaps some other information leaks that can be used against you. Whereas you would need an actual lawyer to tell you whether to respond.
(Of course a chatbot could tell you whether to respond, but it would be illegal. I'm not sure if the chatbot's operators would be liable, or even whether the law against practicing law without a license applies to non-humans. This is probably not just theoretical--I'm sure people do ask cha
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The rules frown on purporting to be a lawyer when you are not
Local law firms make use of "advocates". People with perhaps some legal training but no bar license. They can assist attorneys in doing legal research, making initial contacts with clients and preparing legal paperwork (like threatening letters). Either for signature by the one of the practices attorneys. Or some threatening sounding title that steers clear of suggesting membership in the legal profession.
Loopholes have been found in the law for the benefit of the legal profession. After all, who wrote the
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They have already been sending out form letters for years.
There are a lot of speculative invoice scams that make use of Small Claims court, often around parking. They send form letters, they threaten court, and they rely on people not being knowledgeable enough to make them go away. If they do encounter someone who has the right advice, they usually discontinue their legal action to reduce the costs that the victim can claim.
At the moment the main way people get advice to defend these claims is from forums.
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Pricing things in TFS in dollars is confusing. This is a product to 'work' the Small Claims Court in the UK, which by its nature is cheap and relatively simple (more: https://www.moneysavingexpert.... [moneysavingexpert.com])
The Small Claims Court is exactly where you should go if you're a contractor owed (say) £5000 by a client who isn't paying. It'll cost you something like £25 to file your complaint, and now your client has to go to court. They can't "lawyer up" much - they can of course have legal representation, b
QUANTUM PHYSICIST (Score:3, Insightful)
> a former London litigator and a quantum physicist
WTF is a quantum anything? This shyte is used as a PR wall to raise capital for failing startups. ... litigator" (failed lawyer) is now a "quantum" physicist?
And this "former
Please let his published peer-reviewed works.
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> a former London litigator and a quantum physicist
WTF is a quantum anything? This shyte is used as a PR wall to raise capital for failing startups. ... litigator" (failed lawyer) is now a "quantum" physicist?
And this "former
Please let his published peer-reviewed works.
It's two different people.
The CEO is the long-time litigator.
The CTO is the scientist (PhD in Quantum Physics).
https://daniellong.co/ [daniellong.co]
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i would have gone with the schodinger founder
is both until not.
Fancy Form Letter? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, adding "AI" to the description makes it nice and trendy, but there were firms that filled out generic forms and letters for fighting traffic and parking tickets for years as well, before "AI" got tacked on.
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Schroedinger's Cat (Score:1)
Can the $2.67 letter (seriously they couldn't round up 10% to $3?) be in two places at the same time? Can it argue for the motion/claim and also against it at the same time? Quantum is a measurement of an amount, not an actual thing, so what does it mean to be a quantum physicist or a loser ex-lawyer?
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This is about the UK. The original article has the price quoted correctly, as £2.
Looking forward to the headlines about hallucinati (Score:2)
The won't be the first to annoy a judge with imaginary citations.
https://apnews.com/article/art... [apnews.com]
Assuming the lawyers don't stop it (Score:2)
They'll always be a need for a lawyer that can throw a prosecutor off their game but that's a tiny amount of cases. Most people simply can't afford those kind of lawyers.
The vast majority of lawyers basically look at police procedures and find where the cops did something dodgy or outright illegal and get the case thrown out over that. Otherwise they basically tell you to plea because the way our syst
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AI courtroom drama (Score:3)
Way back in the mid 80s, I had an original IBM PC and a friend had a Mac. We decided to see what would happen if we pit them against each other in chess. (The Mac won likely due to the higher clock speed). I would totally love to watch a pair of AI's duke it out in an AI court (with both an AI judge and a human judge).
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That price seems to have been AI generated (Score:2)
While $2.7 is an actual price, a human editor would know that prices always include two decimal places.
A good thing (Score:3)
In my area, 250 per hour is the normal fee for a subpar lawyer and in many situations, the retainer alone is thousands of dollars. Not something that many can afford.
My hope is that this will eventually pressure real lawyers to bring their prices back down to the average joe's ability to pay or find themselves losing clients to AI not because they are better but because the cost of a real lawyer does not reflex what people are able to pay and if these AI lawyers end up winning a lot of cases then real lawyers better start worrying about their own careers because once the dependence on human lawyers is broken, they may find it impossible to get it back.
Imagine competition in law (Score:2)
Better Call Saul .. (Score:3)
What the fuck was the point of the conversion? (Score:3)
At least keep the original currency and show the converted price, instead of making the FT look like dimwits writing about English lawyers working in England and charging in dollars.