Publish date | 08 July 2019 |
Issue Number | 668 |
Diary | Legalbrief Forensic |
A 22-year-old British entrepreneur has secured $4.6m from the early backers of Facebook for a ‘robot lawyer’ app that fights parking tickets, bank fees and unfair charges. According to report in The Daily Telegraph, DoNotPay, which was founded by Joshua Browder four years ago, has raised the money from a string of heavyweight Silicon Valley investors. They include Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, two early investors in Facebook and Airbnb. Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, partners at the two funds, both sit on Facebook's board. Browder created DoNotPay in the UK after writing software that automatically appealed the dozens of parking tickets he received when at school in London. He has since moved the company to San Francisco to focus on the US market, and expanded the app to challenge hidden fees from banks, fill in government paperwork and claim compensation from companies. DoNotPay uses a chatbot to automatically fill in paperwork and sends it on behalf of users, helping to navigate what Browder claimed was a legal minefield for many people. To date the app has paid out $25m to people who had used it to appeal fees. Browder, who retains majority ownership of the company, said he would use the funding to hire ‘an army of paralegals’ to improve the app’s compatibility with various regional laws in the US. DoNotPay also plans to expand back into the UK by the end of this year.