‘Robot lawyer’ created by Cambridge students will now answer your legal problems via Facebook Messenger

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By Katie King on

LawBot X predicts claim outcomes and boasts 71% success rating

A robot-like legal service created by University of Cambridge law students is planning a relaunch, and will now be hosted on Facebook Messenger.

LawBot was introduced to Legal Cheek readers back in October. Then, we reported Oxbridge boffins Ludwig Bull, Rebecca Agliolo, Jozef Maruscak and Nadial Abdul had built the service to “provide confidential, non-judgmental, free, easy to understand legal knowledge.”

At that time the robot lawyer was very crime-focused, offering advice in relation to 26 “major criminal offences” committed in England and Wales. Later, Bull and co floated the idea of a divorce law bolt-on, though this was later put into “hibernation”.

Relaunch ready and now named LawBot X, the legal service seems to have shifted focus both towards civil law and towards predicting case outcomes rather than giving initial advice.

LawBot X predicting the outcome of a case via Facebook Messenger

On the former, marketing director Agliolo confirmed to Legal Cheek this morning the system covers all practice areas, but performs best for “core private law claims”.

On the latter, we’ve been told the free chatbot uses “data science techniques” to calculate users’ “chances of winning a claim with 71% accuracy.” In managing director Bull’s words:

In the past months the LawBot team has designed software calculating with high accuracy the outcome of a claim. We are proud to make this service available to the public. LawBot X is significant both in its basic research in the application of AI to legal services and in its furthering of the rule of law.

The new service will also enable legal advice-hungry users to be transferred to “a network of law firms”. At this stage, the students were unable to provide the names of the firms, the number of firms, and which practice areas they specialise in. “More information will be released when we launch on 24 July,” Agliolo assured us.

Other exciting developments include the service’s global expansion. LawBot X will soon be available in seven countries: Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

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