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Free robot lawyer created by 19-year-old programmer is saving people a lot of money in legal fees

英国19岁程序员发明世界上第一个律师机器人

British programmer Joshua Browder is helping people save a lot of money on legal fees with his latest project – the world’s first robot lawyer. The 19-year-old developed a free service that allows users to ask any kind of legal question and receive relevant answers autogenerated by bots.

英国程序员约书亚•布劳德只有19岁，他的新项目——世界上第一个律师机器人，能帮人们省下不少法律费用。用户询问的任何法律问题，机器人程序都可以自动生成相关答案，而且此项服务是免费的。

Browder first started the project last summer as a free website to help people appeal unfair parking tickets. He came up with the idea after getting a series of tickets himself for “trivial reasons”. Having wasted several hours on writing appeals to these tickets, he realised that many people do not have the time, legal knowledge or even the energy to appeal. So he decided to create an automatic appeal generator, using previously successful letters as a template. He aptly named the service DoNotPay, given that the legal fees involved in challenging tickets could mount up to sizable amounts between $400 to $900.

这个项目去年夏天刚开始启动，当时布劳德只是想做一个免费网站，帮助人们对不公平的停车罚单进行上诉。他萌生出这个想法是因为他自己就因“无关紧要的原因”被开了一连串的罚单。在浪费了几个小时写上诉书后，他意识到很多人并没有时间、法律知识、甚至精力对这些罚单进行上诉。所以他决定做一个自动申诉生成器，以之前成功的申诉书为模板。鉴于对罚单进行上诉的法律费用可以达到400至900美元之多，他恰当地给这项服务命名为“不要付钱”。

DoNotPay was a huge success, and the tech genius has now gone a step further with the website, converting it into a full fledged robo lawyer equipped to help with a range of legal issues. “I realised that the best way to help people would be to create a computer program that could talk to users, generate appeals, and answer questions like a human,” he told Mashable. “The robot can currently handle parking ticket appeals, payment protection insurance (PPI) claims and delayed flights/trains. It can also answer some general legal questions like ‘I can’t afford my ticket. What do I do?’”

“不要付钱”取得了巨大的成功，这个科技天才在网站的基础上又向前迈出了一步，把网站转化成一个受过充分训练的机器人律师，可以帮助人们解决许多法律问题。他对新闻网站Mashable说：“我意识到帮助人们的最好方式就是创造一个电脑程序，这个程序可以与人对话、生成上诉书、回答问题，就像人一样。目前，这个机器人可以处理停车罚单上诉问题、支付保护保险（PPI）索赔问题和飞机、火车延误问题。它还可以解答一些基本的法律问题，比如‘我付不起罚单，该怎么办？’”

“I am ultimately looking to give it as much functionality as possible in the spirit of trying to replace the large group of exploitative lawyers,” he added. To use the service, users need to go to the website donotpay.co.uk and sign up for free. Once signed in, the robot will ask the user a series of questions about their situation. When it has collected enough information, and if the person has legal grounds for an appeal, the robot will then generate a letter for the person to use.

他还说：“秉着设法避免被大批律师剥削的精神，我总是尽可能地给它多添加功能”。使用这项服务，用户需要到网站donotpay.co.uk免费注册。注册成功后，机器人会向他们询问一系列有关自身情况的问题。收集到足够信息后，如果用户的申诉有法律依据，机器人就会生成上诉书。

Browder told Mashable that he received good advice from his professors at Stanford University, where he is currently a freshman. “Initially, I thought the best way to go about it was to create lots of inpidual rules for it to follow,” he explained. “However, I quickly failed with this approach because there are thousands of ways to say the same thing and it would be impossible to catch every one. The breakthrough came when I learned how to create a way for the robot to learn and compare phrases itself, so that it doesn’t matter how the user phrases his or her requests.”

现在布劳德在斯坦福大学读大一，他告诉Mashable说教授给了他很好的建议。他解释说：“一开始，我认为做这个程序最好的方法就是设定许多规则让它遵守。但是，很快我就放弃了这个方法，因为表达同一件事有几千种方式，我不可能为每种方式都设定规则。当我学会如何让机器人自身去学习和分辨措辞时，这才有了突破。这样一来用户提问的方式就不成问题了。”

So he programmed the robot to use text comparison that includes keywords, word order and pronouns. And the more that people use the robot, the better the algorithm gets. But there are situations where the robot can’t help, there’s a response ready for that too. “If the robot can’t answer, it provides generic and helpful message offering the user some sample phrases or the option of contacting me directly,” Browder said. “On the backend, whenever the robot can’t answer, I get notified and I work as quickly as possible to add functionality for any future requests of a similar nature.”

因此他给机器人装上了文本对比程序，包括对比关键词、词序和代词。并且使用机器人的用户越多，这套算法就越完善。但是总会有机器人无法解答的问题，对此他也有对策。布劳德说：“如果机器人不能回答某个问题，他就会给用户提供一些通用的、有用的信息，比如一些样本措辞，或者选择直接与我联系。在后台，一旦机器人遇到不会回答的问题，我都会得到通知，然后我就会尽快为它补充相关功能，这样以后遇到类似问题它就可以解决了。”