Have Nots Barred from Justice by Law Bars: The Case of Faridian v. The World’s First Robot Lawyer (DoNotPay, Inc)

Can you afford an attorney?

If not, chances are that you may receive assistance from an overworked, sometimes substandard public defender. (These lawyers are referred to by some as “public pretenders”.)

Worse, the right to representation only extends to criminal defense. If you have a civil matter, such as a consumer protection case against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC or a custody case, you are out of luck.

There are legal aid services. I applied for legal aid to defend me against a case filed by attorney William Zac White on behalf of Mike Pietrczak, supposedly through his father Walter Pietrczak who had a power of attorney. Legal Aid said I would qualify, but the Pietrczak’s consulted them first, so even though legal aid declined to pursue the case on behalf of the Pietrczaks, they had a conflict of interest and could not represent me.

There is a wonderful public interest firm called Institute for Justice that works pro bono for regular folk, mostly on consumer cases, but they are way too small to make a significant impact on obtaining justice for the masses.

Back in the day, before the internet, legal research was extremely difficult. You had to find a law library, then bury yourself in the stacks, sifting out cases and following a trail to find legal precedent.

Legal research is not so difficult now, especially if you can afford a subscription to Westlaw or Lexus-Nexus. (I am told the subscription for non-attorneys is quite a bit more expensive than for attorneys.)

And there are plenty of forms online for simple matters like transferring title to real estate. But BE AWARE. Filling out these forms on behalf of a trust or limited liability company is considered to be the unauthorized practice of law by some courts.

It is highly questionable whether offering those forms online is the “unauthorized practice of law”.

There is a company that took it a step further and markets itself as “the world’s first robot lawyer”, DoNotPay, Inc.

A class action lawsuit was filed by a licensed attorney on behalf of a customer of the robot lawyer and other customers similarly situated. A copy of the complaint is posted below for you to download and read.

The attorneys for the plaintiff argue that there is a good reason a person not “barred” should be barred from practicing law. (Only attorneys would decide to say a person who is not barred from practicing law is “barred”.)

“The State Bar Act sets baseline standards for attorneys in the state in order to protect California residents from being harmed by unskilled or unscrupulous laymen passing themselves off as bona fide practitioners.” (Paragraph 14)

My personal experience is that I provide myself with much more competent and zealous legal representation than an attorney gives me. I do agree with the Bible, that “in a multitude of counselors is wisdom.” I want to be allowed to discuss my case with a variety of attorneys and non-attorneys. If I am ill or unable to make it to a hearing in a far-off jurisdiction, I want to be able to enlist co-counsel. Many jurisdictions, such as the Federal District Court for Southern California forbid this kind of piecemeal representation.

The most difficult part of advocating on my own behalf is the clerical work. I want to be able to hire a paralegal, but the government forbids paralegals from working without the supervision of a licensed attorney.

In the Pietrczak case, I represented myself so well against the attorney William White of Heber Springs that he eventually asked the court to dismiss me with prejudice. I “prevailed”. But I was not allowed to represent my living trust, of which I was sole settlor, trustee and beneficiary. So, Arkansas Judge Susan Weaver found against the Trust and gave all the property held in trust and all my personal property that was on the real estate, my personal right to use of the property and money the Pietrczaks defrauded from me to the Pietrczaks and their attorney, Willy White.

Judge Weaver also decided that a deed that was “prepared” by me, meaning I filled in the blanks in an online form at the direction of Mike Pietrczak, was “void ab initio” because I am not an attorney. The deed was otherwise perfect.

Hypocritically, attorneys including William White often use forms like these.

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice. I am just wondering about one other section of the complaint filed against the world’s first robot lawyer. “There are many questions of law and fact common to the claims of Plaintiff and the Class, and those questions predominate over any questions that may affect individual members of the Class.” (Paragraph 38)

It seems to me that defense attorneys for big businesses love to argue that cases cannot be subject to class actions because the damages to each victim are not the same as to the class representative. First American Home Warranty Company used that excuse on cases. One customer might have a water heater that was not repaired, the next might have a furnace that did not heat the home. Unethical “minors counsel” or social workers in custody cases have argued that when sued by the parents and children they harm.

The customers who were allegedly harmed by using DoNotPay’s service to fight a parking ticket were obviously harmed or not in a different way than a customer who used the service to create a limited liability company.

It will be interesting to follow this case. I wonder if DoNotPay, Inc will pay a licensed attorney to represent it, or if it will use its own robot lawyer and use this case as a platform to determine if a person or entity is allowed to use these kinds of legal tools to assist in obtaining justice.

UPDATE: One of my favorite readers gave me a link to an interview on Tik Toc, discussing how a company called ChatGBT designed software that has passed a bar exam. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRv6rCyL/