In our weekly look into the world of business, Luke Pritchard from our Corporate and Commercial team, takes a look at a new legal app on the market…

Josh Browder is the London-born, Stanford undergraduate who has vowed to replace solicitors and barristers with robots and algorithms. Two years ago, he launched donotpay.co.uk, an app which automated the appeals process against parking tickets in the UK and the US.

The so-called ‘Bot’, has now been expanded to assist with council tax appeals and fraudulent credit card purchases, and in future he believes the app will also be capable of advising on family proceedings and criminal defence cases.

The challenge facing Browder is obvious: legal professionals adapt their advice within an ever-changing market, often spotting issues that are not directly linked to the matter at hand, and providing commercially savvy advice with a degree of empathy and understanding.  The success of the Bot will be entirely dependent on the quality of information fed into it.

The legal profession will be hoping that the progress made by donotpay.co.uk will aid transparency and fairness in the legal market, without diminishing access to high quality legal advice.