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AI Law Firm Offering $2.7 Legal Letters Wins 'Landmark' Approval (ft.com) 25

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
English regulators have approved a new law firm that uses AI instead of lawyers to offer services for as little as $2.67, as the technology continues to disrupt industries from finance to accounting. From a report: Garfield AI, which was founded by a former London litigator and a quantum physicist, is an online tool that allows businesses and individuals such as tradespeople to chase debts owed to them at a substantially lower cost than the average lawyer's fees. Its AI assistant guides claimants through the small claims court process, including creating "polite chaser" letters for $2.67 and filing documents such as claim forms for $67, and can also produce arguments for claimants to use at trial.

AI models are increasingly encroaching on legally sensitive tasks in high-paying sectors such as law and finance, potentially undercutting fees in high-volume work. Garfield received approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the legal regulator for England and Wales, in March, in a move the latter hailed as a "landmark moment" for the industry.

AI Law Firm Offering $2.7 Legal Letters Wins 'Landmark' Approval More | Reply

AI Law Firm Offering $2.7 Legal Letters Wins 'Landmark' Approval

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  • A dangerous game (Score:3)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2025 @02:50PM (#65356929)
    This seems likely to backfire extremely quickly. AI lawyers are far more likely to be abused by debt collectors and bullying corporations than individuals trying to recover money they are to benefit individuals (or small businesses) that are just trying to get a fair shake.
    • But you can also respond to a $1.70 legal notice with your own $1.70 legal notice. I think this benefit skews towards the individual, as large corporations and organizations will have attorneys on retainer to churn out these types of letters, so the nominal cost for them is pretty low. Hiring an attorney to write one letter is comparatively expensive for an individual.

      • "But you can also respond to a $1.70 legal notice with your own $1.70 legal notice. "

        The problem is that it won't be "a" $1.70 legal notice. It'll be a thousand, or ten thousand. An individual can't respond in kind.

        • At that point, you take all the letters and dump them on a Judge's desk. They'll likely be annoyed at the one sending all them and take measures.

          Harassment is a thing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      This seems likely to backfire extremely quickly. AI lawyers are far more likely to be abused by debt collectors and bullying corporations than individuals trying to recover money they are to benefit individuals (or small businesses) that are just trying to get a fair shake. /blockquote

      Yeah, this could get dangerous because there are often laws that protect debtors from harassment and other things, and if the people using these AI tools aren't careful, they could end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit.

      Yes, de

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 )
      It's hard to argue with the idea that people pushing out low-effort nastygrams will also embrace bots if they prove either reliable enough or cheap enough to proofread; but I suspect that(at least with current likely suspects, it's possible that something less predictable will be unleashed) the effect won't be as dramatic just because of how much business process automation and separation of labor you can already manage, especially when you are just sending scary-looking letters to random little people rath

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        The rules frown on purporting to be a lawyer when you are not

        Local law firms make use of "advocates". People with perhaps some legal training but no bar license. They can assist attorneys in doing legal research, making initial contacts with clients and preparing legal paperwork (like threatening letters). Either for signature by the one of the practices attorneys. Or some threatening sounding title that steers clear of suggesting membership in the legal profession.

        Loopholes have been found in the law for the benefit of the legal profession. After all, who wrote the

  • QUANTUM PHYSICIST (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 )

    > a former London litigator and a quantum physicist

    WTF is a quantum anything? This shyte is used as a PR wall to raise capital for failing startups.
    And this "former ... litigator" (failed lawyer) is now a "quantum" physicist?

    Please let his published peer-reviewed works.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > a former London litigator and a quantum physicist

      WTF is a quantum anything? This shyte is used as a PR wall to raise capital for failing startups.
      And this "former ... litigator" (failed lawyer) is now a "quantum" physicist?

      Please let his published peer-reviewed works.

      It's two different people.
      The CEO is the long-time litigator.
      The CTO is the scientist (PhD in Quantum Physics).

      https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdaniellong.co%2F [daniellong.co]

  • Fancy Form Letter? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MDMurphy ( 208495 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2025 @03:07PM (#65356985)
    It feels like this could be nothing much more than a new-fangled form letter. Boilerplate legal documents have been around for decades, where you only filled in the particulars like names, addresses, and amounts. A little better if it warns you that the amount you are asking for is too much or too little for the particular court.

    Of course, adding "AI" to the description makes it nice and trendy, but there were firms that filled out generic forms and letters for fighting traffic and parking tickets for years as well, before "AI" got tacked on.
    • It's doing what inexperienced legal interns are doing today while the client is charged law-partner rates. It's going to be no worse than what some newly-hired kid does, but at far more reasonable rates. So I don't see a problem with it, it's far better value for money and a task really more suited to robolawyers in the first place.

    • Can the $2.67 letter (seriously they couldn't round up 10% to $3?) be in two places at the same time? Can it argue for the motion/claim and also against it at the same time? Quantum is a measurement of an amount, not an actual thing, so what does it mean to be a quantum physicist or a loser ex-lawyer?

  • Then llms are going to make them basically irrelevant except for the kind that got OJ Simpson off.

    They'll always be a need for a lawyer that can throw a prosecutor off their game but that's a tiny amount of cases. Most people simply can't afford those kind of lawyers.

    The vast majority of lawyers basically look at police procedures and find where the cops did something dodgy or outright illegal and get the case thrown out over that. Otherwise they basically tell you to plea because the way our syst
    • AI in legal work won't get banned. As it gets better and AI agents can do things like pass the BAR exam, we'll even see it legitimized to hire a fully AI lawyer to defend yourself in court, or sue your neighbors.

  • Way back in the mid 80s, I had an original IBM PC and a friend had a Mac. We decided to see what would happen if we pit them against each other in chess. (The Mac won likely due to the higher clock speed). I would totally love to watch a pair of AI's duke it out in an AI court (with both an AI judge and a human judge).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by JP205 ( 263673 )
      Interesting idea, after reading you comment my mind went immediately to AI jurors and I'm finding I have mixed feelings about that.

  • While $2.7 is an actual price, a human editor would know that prices always include two decimal places.

  • While a human lawyer is by far preferable. How many are unable to defend themselves from lack of funds because the cost of lawyers is way to much.
    In my area, 250 per hour is the normal fee for a subpar lawyer and in many situations, the retainer alone is thousands of dollars. Not something that many can afford.
    My hope is that this will eventually pressure real lawyers to bring their prices back down to the average joe's ability to pay or find themselves losing clients to AI not because they are better but
  • Low prices, going the extra mile for clients, knowing what your problem is. Right now all we get is simple interactions somehow drawn out over years at $300 a sentence. Most clients have to deal with a revolving door of $10 / hour disinterested graduate lawyers who do not know their case, whose only role is to ask for continuance for $4,000 court fees. It's possibly the worst industry.

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