United StatesProfessional services2024–2025DoNotPay
Subscription chatbot marketed as the world's first robot lawyer
FTC finalizes order making DoNotPay pay $193,000 over unproven 'robot lawyer' claims
Problem
DoNotPay sold a subscription service as a robot lawyer. The FTC said the company never tested whether its AI matched a human lawyer's output and hired no attorneys to check its legal features.
Approach
The FTC announced the complaint in September 2024 and finalized the order in early 2025. DoNotPay must pay $193,000, notify people who subscribed between 2021 and 2023, and stop claiming its service performs like a lawyer without enough evidence.
Results
Takeaway
The order prohibited unsupported claims that the service performed like a lawyer and required payment and subscriber notification.
Categories
- Size
- Small business
- Industry
- Professional services
- Business function
- Customer serviceMarketing and sales
- Innovation type
- Product and service innovation
- AI technology
- Conversational and voice AIGenerative AI
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Regulator, audit or court
Sources
Source summaries
The FTC press release states the payment, the notice to 2021-2023 subscribers and the ban on unsupported lawyer-equivalence claims. It repeats the complaint that DoNotPay did no testing and used no attorneys.
Full details are in the original sources.