Need to fill out legal forms but can’t afford a human lawyer? Well, there’s an app for that. DoNotPay, a chatbot that has been dubbed “The World’s First Robot Lawyer,” provides free legal aid to users on issues ranging from appealing parking tickets to landlord disputes. Don’t expect the robot lawyer to represent you in court any time soon, but it can arm you with some of the tools and knowledge to deal with your legal case.

The artificial intelligence asks the user a series of questions about their legal issue. Then, after learning about the user’s personal situation, the AI can help fill out necessary legal forms or provide links to other resources. Joshua Browder, the founder and CEO of DoNotPay, launched the bot in 2015 to help people appeal their parking tickets. According to The Telegraph, DoNotPay has helped beat an estimated 375,000 parking tickets worth around $10 million since its launch. But the bot hasn’t stopped there.

DoNotPay started out in London and was programmed with New York City laws soon after. Since the bot first went live two years ago, it has expanded its reach to the rest of the United Kingdom and United States and will be able to assist people with 1,000 areas of law. A Facebook Messenger portion of the app can even help refugees complete immigration applications for the U.S. and Canada, and apply for asylum support in the U.K.

Browder, who was named on multiple Forbes 30 Under 30 lists for Europe for 2017, hopes DoNotPay will provide better access to legal resources for lower income individuals. The 20-year-old Stanford student told VentureBeat that DoNotPay started as a tool to fight his own parking tickets, but ended up revealing to him “how lawyers are exploiting human misery.”

“From discrimination in Silicon Valley to the tragedy in London with an apartment building catching fire, it seems the only people benefitting from injustice are a handful of lawyers,” Browder said. “I hope that DoNotPay, by helping with these issues and many more, will ultimately give everyone the same legal power as the richest in society.”

With tools like DoNotPay, people may not have to pay a hefty price for a lawyer to help them fill out legal paperwork. But for more complex cases, a human touch might still be the better way to go.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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After serving only three months in Santa Clara County jail for sexual assault, former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was released on Friday morning. He left after serving half of a six-month sentence that he received in June after he was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on Stanford’s campus in of January last year.

The case has been widely covered and the judge was harshly criticized for the lenient punishment. Prosecutors wanted a six-year sentence, but Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky responded saying, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others.”

As Turner left the jail, wearing dress pants and a wrinkled white shirt, a small group of demonstrators and members of the press watched. Sandra Pfeiffer, who told NPR member station KQED that she was a rape survivor herself, said, “Other people get locked away for a very long time, why did he get out after 90 days? Why? Why? It doesn’t make sense.”

In the aftermath of Turner’s sentencing, the Department of Education released a list of sexual assault complaints at colleges across the country. The list revealed that Stanford had five federal complaints–not counting Brock Turner’s case, which was conducted in the justice system not by the university–into how the school handled sexual assault cases. According to the list, Stanford had the most of any school under review.

Before Turner was sentenced, his father sent a controversial letter to the judge in his son’s case, which also led to a lot of criticism. In the letter, he argued that his son didn’t deserve to have his life ruined by a prison sentence. He wrote, “His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.”

In court, Turner’s victim read a powerful statement in court where she questioned the lenient punishment and society’s view on sexual assault. She also wondered what the outcome would have been if the assailant had not been a privileged, white star-athlete:

If I had been sexually assaulted by an un-athletic guy from a community college, what would his sentence be? If a first time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be?

Turner’s early release made a lot of people on Twitter mad, as some saw it as an example of white privilege.

I know dudes from my hood who’ve had their lives ruined over a bag of weed and this dude Brock Turner just did 3 months for rape.

— Blédakiss (@ChefRoble) September 2, 2016

If only Brock Turner were a poor undocumented Mexican immigrant & not ‘an All-American boy,’ Trumpists cld use him to vilify a whole people.

— Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) September 2, 2016

Some argued that his sentence reflects one of the many reasons why victims of sexual abuse often do not speak up.

If you ever say “Why don’t rape victims just tell the police?” Please refer to the Brock Turner case and realize that it’s not that simple.

— tess (@that1mum) September 2, 2016

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Brock Turner Released From Jail After Serving 3 Months for Sexual Assault appeared first on Law Street.

Wikileaks Is Probably Publishing Your Private Data Right Now

Wikileaks is often applauded for dumping mass data files exposing the secrets of the Democratic Party and the NSA. But now its contributors may have gone too far. Wikileaks has recently been accused of disclosing identifying information on the health and other topics of private citizens. The Huffington Post wrote a scathing article condemning Wikileaks for exposing the lives of sexual assault victims and the sexual orientation of people who otherwise would like that to be kept a secret.  Woah, woah, woah. Now that’s going too far right? Could there be something wrong with a world that knows (or doesn’t know) everything?

Wikileaks has been quick to defend itself:

Reports that WikiLeaks published data on “Turkish women” are entirely false. US election sees media standards decay. https://t.co/odmpxNB0Jp

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 23, 2016

Rant Crush

RantCrush collects the top trending topics in the law and policy world each day just for you.

The post RantCrush Top 5: August 24, 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

Protests erupted throughout the nation last week after a California judge sentenced former Stanford University freshman Brock Turner to a six month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

People are mad, and there are currently six Change.org petitions protesting Turner’s sentence. If you’re new to the case, here are five reasons why people are outraged:

1. The Judge Was Extremely Lenient

On March 30, Turner was found guilty of three felonies: assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.

Then on June 2, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail, which is less than the state’s recommended sentence, followed by three years of formal probation. Turner must also register as a sex offender and participate in a sex offender rehabilitation program. However, with good behavior Turner may only have to serve three months of the prison sentence.

Since the charges carried a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison, Turner’s six months came across as extremely lenient. Apparently the judge worried that a stiffer sentence would have a “severe impact” on the 20-year-old star swimmer.

Many people theorized that the judge offered Turner “special treatment” because he was a Stanford alum as well as a former college athlete. The judge is now facing public demands to resign from office.

2. The Father’s Letter to the Judge

Before sentencing, Turner’s father wrote a letter arguing that his son should receive probation instead of jail time. In the letter Dan A. Turner writes, “He will never be his happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile.”

Turner added, “His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.”

Brock Turner’s father criticized for statement he read to court in sexual assault case: https://t.co/ELMMkUfQtu pic.twitter.com/A9CcKvBiWu

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) June 7, 2016

At no point did the letter acknowledge that Brock committed the assault, instead the letter focused entirely on Brock’s pain and suffering rather than his victim’s. Eventually Dan A. Turner apologized for his “20 minutes of action” comment, which he claims was “misinterpreted by people.”

3. Biased Media Coverage

Mugshot Double Standard

For weeks, whenever the media reported on Turner, this photo was used:

Brock Turner’s friend blames his felony sexual-assault conviction on political correctness: https://t.co/GGXH6VcwjR pic.twitter.com/TO3KQ1k8cP

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) June 6, 2016

After a while this photo of a suited Turner smiling for his yearbook photo began to drum up its own controversy. Many people wondered why Turner’s booking photo wasn’t being used instead. It wasn’t until recently that Turner’s mugshot from the night he was arrested was finally released to the public.

The mugshot taken of Brock Turner the night of his arrest https://t.co/NVU6ZmXTqe pic.twitter.com/3lKGu9W7Sl

— deathandtaxes (@DeathAndTaxes) June 7, 2016

These photos illustrate a double standard in the way the media treats young, white criminals versus young, black victims of violence.  For an excellent explainer on this double standard, read this think piece by Mic.

Washington Post Coverage

The Washington Post was also criticized for its coverage of Turner’s verdict. In an article titled “All-American swimmer found guilty of sexually assaulting unconscious woman on Stanford campus,” the paper dedicated several paragraphs to Turner’s swimming career and squashed Olympic dreams.

Even though Turner had already been convicted, the paper showed him preferential treatment by focusing on his accomplishments and the impact the sentence would have on his once-promising future, rather than the severity of his crimes.

4. The Victim’s Powerful Letter

After the sentencing, the victim, whose identity has been protected, wrote a heart wrenching 12-page letter addressed to Turner that has since gone viral. In the letter, she discusses learning about her assault, reliving that night in court, and struggling to move forward after everything that happened to her.

She writes,

If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. Nobody wins. We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering. Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.

Unfortunately, the victim’s emotional message had no real effect of the outcome of Turner’s sentencing.

You can read the victim’s powerful letter in full here.

5. We Can’t Even Call Him a Rapist

It’s important to note that the reason I haven’t used the word “rapist” to define Turner throughout this article is not due to personal bias, but California law.

According to New York Magazine,

In California, rape is defined as someone using “physical force, intimidation, duress, or threats to persuade the victim to engage in sexual intercourse.” In the case of Turner’s rape of an unconscious woman, witnesses and testimony determined that Turner penetrated his victim with a foreign object, not a sexual organ.

So in other words California is telling me and the rest of the world that Turner was able to rip the clothes from his victim’s body, insert his fingers inside of her, grope her breasts, and hump her half naked body, but we can’t call him a rapist?

Like almost everything else involving this case, it simply doesn’t seem fair.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 5 Reasons Why People Are Protesting Brock Turner’s Sentence appeared first on Law Street.