Mar 1, 2023 · 49m · a16z
The Robot Lawyer Resistance with Joshua Browder of DoNotPay
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In this episode of the a16z Podcast, DoNotPay founder and CEO Joshua Browder joins host Steph Smith to discuss how his company uses artificial intelligence to automate consumer legal rights, fight corporate bureaucracy, and challenge traditional legal institutions. He explores the technological evolution of legal automation, the controversy surrounding AI courtroom assistants, and the ongoing pushback from corporate and regulatory incumbents.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The host holds 39.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 4.3 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 3.1 The host pushing back 3.6
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 24:45 Attacking Lawyers' Professional Integrity
Joshua forcefully dismisses concerns about AI errors by accusing human lawyers of stealing money and showing up to court drunk.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 30:27 Confronting DoNotPay Viral CriticismSteph directly challenges Joshua on public backlash and viral threads alleging that DoNotPay's services are ineffective and do not actually use AI.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 10:35 Explaining Medical Price Scraping MechanicsJoshua provides a detailed breakdown of the No Surprises Act and how DoNotPay uses LLMs to scrape and standardize 1.4 million rows of hidden hospital pricing data.
The host holds their own ▶ 7:51 Defining Three Generations of Legal TechSteph shows clear expertise by framing the evolutionary progression of legal automation from human drafting to decision trees and generative AI.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal Disclosures and Podcast Bumper | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Steph guides Joshua through DoNotPay's origin story and specific product use cases such as free raffle entry laws and lost pet registrations. Joshua educates the host on obscure consumer rights statutes that DoNotPay automates. | |
| Scaling DoNotPay and the Transition to Generative AI | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Steph demonstrates solid technical context by categorizing legal automation into three evolutionary generations. Joshua expands on this by explaining how generative AI enables multi-turn negotiations for higher value disputes. | |
| Automating Medical Bill Negotiations and Limits of AI | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Steph challenges Joshua with the premise that mediocre AI legal representation could leave consumers worse off than having no lawyer. Joshua defends DoNotPay by outlining their No Surprises Act scraper while acknowledging AI limits in emotional cases. | |
| The Corporate AI Arms Race and Comcast Bots | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Steph asks how corporations react to DoNotPay and whether their bots can keep up with corporate AI defenses. Joshua details DoNotPay's distributed proxy strategy and describes live AI-versus-AI chat negotiations against Comcast. | |
| Attempting a Courtroom AI and Legal Industry Pushback | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | Steph steers the conversation into Joshua's attempt to use bone-conduction glasses in court. Joshua reacts combatively toward the legal establishment, calling incumbent lawyers dinosaurs attempting to sue to stop the ice age after state bar threats. | |
| Fine-Tuning AI Models, Hallucinations, and Access to Justice | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Steph presses Joshua on whether consumers possess the discretion to evaluate AI legal advice safely. Joshua aggressively counters by highlighting human lawyers' ethical flaws and explaining internal guardrails built to curb AI hallucinations. | |
| Addressing Public Criticism, Deflation, and Anti-AI Legislation | 6 | 4 | 6 | 7 | Steph directly confronts Joshua with viral online criticism accusing DoNotPay of poor performance and fake AI features. Joshua dismisses the backlash, telling critics to relax and asserting that lawyers fabricated fake cases to discredit him. | |
| The $1M Supreme Court Stunt, Robocall Payback, and Building DoNotPay | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Steph explores Joshua's viral $1 million Supreme Court bounty and asks about DoNotPay's business moat. Joshua explains their horizontal expansion strategy and details a virtual credit card trap used to catch and sue robocallers. |
Statements from this episode (21)
US law mandates free mail-in entries for all paid contests
“So there's this obscure law in America that says that you can enter any competition for free. So you hear on the radio, you can pay to enter, but they always bury in the terms of service that if you mail an obscure letter to an obscure address, you can enter f…”
DoNotPay has processed over two million cases and hundreds of thousands of subscribers
“So we've submitted over two million cases, and we have hundreds of thousands of active subscribers at the moment.”
United Airlines grants refunds over 80% of the time for DoNotPay letters
“And so, 80% plus of the time, they just grant the refund.”
DoNotPay's first major AI product will target medical bill negotiation
“And so what we're working on now is actually communicating life on medical bills specifically, and I can go into the laws we're using around that. That will be kind of our first major AI product in Do Not Pay.”
DoNotPay used GPT to build a 1.4M row hospital price database
“What we've done is we've had GPT scrape all of these websites Create a master Excel of 1.4 million rows because they don't name these treatments properly. They just put obscure codes and standardize it among all hospitals in the US.”
Software cannot replace human touch in highly emotional legal cases
“Many years ago, actually, before I turned do not pay into a business, I tried to use do not pay for asylum, like to automate the asylum process. But with these cases, sometimes people are crying in the courtroom, and that's something that software can never re…”
DoNotPay routes requests through user IPs to bypass corporate anti-bot blocks
“And the way we got around that is we have the Do Not Pay app, and it actually uses the IP of the user, so it's like a, it's almost like lots of distributed nodes fighting these companies, and they haven't been able to stop that.”
Major corporations deploy AI to block consumer attempts at refunds
“On the AI front, the big companies are using AI now to stop consumers even outside of Do Not Pay.”
DoNotPay received 300 requests for AI courtroom defense and accepted two
“We had about 300 people step forward and offer their cases, and we accepted two of them”
State bar association threatened DoNotPay with prosecution over AI lawyer
“Another state bar association actually threatened us. And they said that if you do it, it's against the rules and we'll prosecute you for unauthorized practice of law.”
Lawyers oppose AI because automation threatens their copy-paste work
“Lawyers really don't want this technology to move forward that much because they realize that a lot of their job is copying and pasting documents. Not all lawyers are like that, but some of them are. And if AI can just do that and replace them, it puts a lot o…”
A Colombian judge wrote an official court opinion using ChatGPT
“A Colombian judge recently wrote one of their opinions using ChatGPT.”
Lawyers using AI keep billing rates high to pocket the savings
“Lawyers themselves are using this technology, but instead of passing the savings on to the client, they're keeping the rates the same and just pocketing the savings for themselves.”
Generic AI models like OpenAI's DaVinci perform poorly on legal tasks
“These generic AI models like DaVinci from OpenAI, they're not actually that good at the law.”
AI legal assistants will dismantle predatory business models with automated lawsuits
“I think people will have assistance in courtrooms. I think that consumer rights, they'll have AI general counsels sitting on their shoulder, making sure that these companies aren't ripping them off, and it will just create a more efficient world where companie…”
DoNotPay aims to eliminate the need for everyday lawyers
“My goal is to make it so the average person doesn't need to see a lawyer. If you're being accused of burning down someone's house, you should probably still see a lawyer, but normal people don't deal with that. They just deal with Comcast, United, Their hospit…”
Congressional staffers will use ChatGPT to draft laws within a year
“I think in the next year, it's already secretly writing laws. A lot of laws originate from an overworked staffer in Congress, and I'm sure it's two a.m. They need to finish it, and they're probably typing in ChatGPT asking, asking it to help them a bit, and so…”
AI will enable instant automated class-action lawsuits
“Yeah, I think there'll be instant class actions. So right now, the way class actions work is imagine a big cryptocurrency exchange steals all the money... Years of bankruptcy and class actions drag it out. And then almost 10 years later, someone gets a check f…”
Browder envisions autonomous robot lawyers securing consumer refunds in the background
“I imagine a world where you didn't even know that something happened. Robot lawyers were fighting for you in the background, and almost immediately they get you the refund or something back.”
Federal TCPA law allows $1,500 damages per spam call
“So there's an obscure 1991 law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. That allows you to sue these spam callers for 1500 dollars a call if you're on the federal do not call list.”
Consumer legal tech requires a horizontal strategy to build retention
“Do not pay is only successful because it's a horizontal company that Average person, unless you're a bad driver like me, only gets a parking ticket once a year. And so you can't be able to build a real company around that. And so because we've gone horizontal …”