A few minutes ago, I got my coffee ready, I set my timer, and I got down to writing this email. As a first step, I checked some news headlines and bingo — I saw it:
“AI-powered ‘robot’ lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court”
Maybe you’ve heard the news already. A startup called DoNotPay is helping people fight speeding tickets.
Before, DoNotPay used AI to write a letter that you could mail in to contest your speeding ticket. But now, DoNotPay will help one lucky defendant in court.
The DoNotPay app will run on the defendant’s phone. It will listen in to the court proceedings. And it will tell the defendant what to say to get out of his speeding ticket in court.
“This courtroom stuff is more advocacy,” said Joshua Browder, the CEO of DoNotPay. “It’s more to encourage the system to change.” Browder says he wants to give access to law to people who can’t afford it.
As you might guess, this noble mission isn’t very popular with lawyers themselves.
When Browder tweeted about his new courtroom “robot”, lawyers jumped on him, and threatened he would go to jail if he followed through with this plan.
And verily, a courtroom robot is not legal in most places. In most places, all parties have to agree to be recorded. But I doubt good will and keeping Browder out of jail is why lawyers jumped all over Browder’s tweet, telling him to stop this project immediately.
Lawyers still have a bit of time.
Right now, courtroom AI robots just handle speeding tickets. And Browder admits even that took a lot of work.
His company had to retrain generic AI for this specialized task. “AI is a high school student,” Browder said, “and we’re sending it to law school.”
Law school… and then what? because Being a good lawyer is not just about knowing the letter of the law.
Specifically, I have in mind a passage I read in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
Kahneman says there are two fundamental ways lawyers argue.
These two ways are actually illustrated perfectly in the little debate Daniel Throssell and I had last week, in emails talking about newsletters and who wants ’em.
So I will make you an offer right now, which you are free to refuse, in case you’d rather go read Thinking Fast and Slow yourself.
My offer is a disappearing bonus.
It’s good until 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PSST tomorrow, Thursday, Jan 12 2023.
If you’ve already bought my Most Valuable Email course, and would like me to spell out Kahneman’s two lawyer strategies, write me before the deadline and ask.
I will write back to you, both with Kahneman’s passage, and the specifics of how Daniel and I each took one of the two approaches.
And if you haven’t bought my Most Valuable Email course, then my offer is the same, except you have to also buy the course before the deadline.
Buy just to get the bonus?
If you find yourself desirous of the disappearing bonus, but reluctant to buy a course just to get that bonus, then I will argue that desire itself is a reason to get MVE.
Because this desire is something you too can create in others. It’s something I talk about in the course itself, specifically inside the 12 Rules of Most Valuable Emails, specifically Rule #10.
For more info on this course, or to get it before the deadline: