Joshua Browder

He was born in London and comes from Hendon in London.⁠[1][2]

A 2017 ABA Journal profile states that he drove to and from high school, calls himself a terrible driver, and, having no job and unable to pay the large tickets he had collected, began challenging them. The Register wrote in 2016 that he received at least 30 parking tickets while living in London; Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry India wrote in 2019 that he wrote letter after letter to contest the 30 parking tickets he had amassed since getting his driver’s license at 18.⁠[3][1][4]

While contesting his tickets he noticed that he kept copying out the same information, so he built an online application to generate appeals, working on it in the summer before he started at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry; he enrolled at Stanford University in 2015.⁠[3]

Above the Law wrote in 2020 that he researched signage and zoning codes, wrote form letters to contest tickets and began winning; when friends asked for his forms, he built an app to generate them, which spread by word of mouth and went viral on RedditRedditReddit is an online platform that organizes content and discussion around interest-based communities, founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Users take part in communities by posting, commenting, and voting; its operating company, Reddit, Inc., listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024.Open the full entry. The Christian Science Monitor wrote in 2016 that he coded the entire DoNotPay bot on his own.⁠[5][6]

The timeline on DoNotPay’s About page states that in 2015 he fought his first parking ticket in London and launched DoNotPay; BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry wrote in 2021 that the name originally stood for “do not pay parking tickets” but later turned into another ethos, “Do not pay lawyers.”⁠[7][8]

Sources give his age at the founding differently: LawNext wrote in 2023 that he founded DoNotPay in 2015 at the age of 17, the ABA Journal wrote in a December 2023 magazine article that he started DoNotPay in 2015 at age 18, and Legal Cheek wrote in 2017 that he was 19 when DoNotPay launched.⁠[9][2][10]

As for his field of study at Stanford University, Above the Law (2020) and Legal Cheek (2017) describe him as a computer science student, as does his speaker biography for Stanford Law SchoolStanford Law SchoolStanford Law School is Stanford University’s law school. Its law curriculum began in 1893, and it offers JD and advanced law degrees. Its alumni include technology-media entrepreneur Michael Arrington.Open the full entry’s CodeX FutureLaw 2017 conference, which lists him in the class of 2019; Business Insider India (2019) describes him as a computer engineering student.⁠[5][2][4][11]

In June 2016 DoNotPay, billed as the “world’s first robot lawyer,” was helping users in London and New York appeal parking tickets free of charge through text-based questions: it asked, for example, whether parking signs had been clearly visible to decide whether an appeal was possible, then guided the user through it. The Christian Science Monitor and The Register wrote that it had taken on about 250,000 cases in the previous 21 months and won 160,000 of them, a success rate of about 64%.⁠[6][1]

The amounts differ: The Register wrote that DoNotPay claimed to have overturned more than $2.5 million in parking tickets, while The Christian Science Monitor, using The Guardian’s figure, wrote that it had appealed more than $4 million in parking fees.⁠[1][6]

He was then 19 and a second-year student at Stanford University. The Register wrote that DoNotPay had moved into New York, planned to launch in Seattle that year, and also helped airline passengers seek compensation for flights delayed by more than four hours; he intended to use it to help Syrian refugees apply for asylum in Europe, partly by translating Arabic into English, and was looking at tenant–landlord disputes. The Christian Science Monitor wrote that he also envisaged helping people with HIV understand their rights and building a platform that would let people with legal knowledge but no coding skills offer simple legal advice.⁠[6][1]

The Register wrote that he got a parking ticket of his own while he was busy keeping the service from crashing. He said the value of bots was “not to order pizzas” and that “the possibilities are endless”; to The Christian Science Monitor he said the bot “does a reasonable job of replacing parking lawyers” and argued that “ultimately regulation is harmful to innovation,” pointing to Uber and Lyft leaving Austin over a fingerprinting rule.⁠[1][6]

The ABA Journal profile of September 2017 states that in August of the previous year he modified DoNotPay to help homeless people in the U.K. apply for public housing.⁠[3]

In March 2017 DoNotPay began helping refugees file asylum applications in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, the U.K. and Canada.⁠[3]

In late May 2017 he received seed money from All Turtles, an AI-focused startup studio, and hired several paralegals to help run DoNotPay over his summer break. In mid-July he announced coverage of nearly 1,000 more areas of law, including consumer rights, employment law and landlord–tenant disputes, and released a free service that lets people create their own legal chatbots.⁠[3]

Business Insider India and LawSites wrote in 2019 that DoNotPay raised $1.1 million in seed funding in 2017; Business Insider India states that the round was led by Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry. The timeline on DoNotPay’s About page states that in 2017 the company expanded to the United States and launched as a mobile app.⁠[4][12][7]

Legal Cheek wrote on August 7, 2017 that, at 20, he had moved into the house that Mark ZuckerbergMark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, Chairman and CEO of Meta, and a co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His work spans social networking, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry used to rent to keep developing DoNotPay; his Stanford University studies had become a “side project,” and he had considered dropping out. The article states that he coded at night on Diet Coke and the meal-replacement drink Soylent, planned to extend the service to divorce, train ticket refunds, council tax and criminal defence, and hoped to raise venture capital in the coming months.⁠[2]

The article quotes him as saying “Lawyers all over the world should be very scared of this technology” and “I want to be the go-to platform for all legal help,” and also quotes his remark to The Sunday Times: “No one can stop me in the world.”⁠[2]

On September 14, 2017 the ABA Journal published a Legal Rebels profile of him, then 20, and DoNotPay. It describes DoNotPay as a chatbot that uses natural language processing to ask about a ticket and generate an appeal, states that it had overturned more than 375,000 tickets and was free to use, and notes that he had been dubbed “the Robin Hood of the internet”; he said he might rename the product “DoNotPay Lawyers” and that he still enjoys driving. A 2024 ABA Journal article calls him a 2017 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.⁠[3][13]

On June 22, 2018 the Thiel Foundation announced the 20 members of the 2018 class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, each receiving $100,000 and mentorship from the Thiel Foundation’s network of technology founders, investors and scientists. He is item 12, listed from London, U.K., with the project DoNotPay in the field of artificial intelligence; the description calls him the founder and CEO of DoNotPay, “the world’s first robot lawyer,” which aims to make the law free, automated and instant for consumers.⁠[14]

Business Insider India wrote in 2019 that he was announced as a Thiel Fellow in his senior year, 2018; Fortune wrote in 2022 that his late registration at Stanford University became an “un-registration” when he decided to leave Stanford University to become a Thiel Fellow.⁠[4][15]

On July 3, 2019 he announced in a tweet that DoNotPay had raised $4.6 million in seed funding. LawSites lists Andreessen Horowitz, Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry, Greylock Ventures, Felicis VenturesFelicisFelicis (whose funds and earlier brand use the name Felicis Ventures) is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, founded in 2006 by former Google product manager Aydin Senkut; it has invested in companies including Shopify, Canva and Adyen.Open the full entry, Index VenturesIndex VenturesIndex Ventures is a venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1996. It invests from seed through growth and operates across London, San Francisco and New York, supporting technology companies through a transatlantic network.Open the full entry and Tuesday CapitalTuesday CapitalTuesday Capital is an early-stage venture firm founded in 2011 by Patrick Gallagher and Michael Arrington as CrunchFund. Renamed in 2018, it operates independently of TechCrunch and Crunchbase.Open the full entry as well as several individuals among the investors, and his tweet also named CoatueCoatueCoatue is a technology- and innovation-focused investment management firm founded by Philippe Laffont in 1999, operating in both public and private markets. Its current website lists Thomas Laffont as co-founder and chief investment officer of private investments; a Form ADV filed on July 29, 2026, disclosed regulatory assets under management of $92,705,722,582.Open the full entry; Business Insider India wrote that the round was led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Highland Capital, Tuesday and Coatue Asset Management. LawSites states that he was then 22 and based in the San Francisco area.⁠[12][4]

At the time, DoNotPay’s iOS app helped individuals file actions in any U.S. small claims court, fight unfair bank and credit card fees and overdraft charges, claim unclaimed government and class action settlement money, fix credit report errors and sue big technology companies over data breaches; Business Insider India wrote that it covered 100 areas of local and municipal law, that generating a letter or complaint was free while a paid subscription had the company file it for the user, and that a service launched after the Equifax breach had helped some customers win up to $9,000 from the credit bureau in small claims court.⁠[12][4]

He said: “A lot of my classmates at Stanford want to work at Facebook and Google,” and “I want to work on something that gives justice to people and encourages it.” The timeline on DoNotPay’s About page states that in 2019 the company launched the Free Trial Card, a virtual card that automatically declines charges once a free trial ends.⁠[4][7]

On June 23, 2020 DoNotPay announced a $12 million (about £9.6 million) Series A led by Coatue, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Felicis Ventures, all of which had backed the earlier seed round; the round was conducted over Zoom, and Legal Cheek put the company’s estimated valuation at about $80 million. The subscription then cost $3 a month; he was 23 and had moved to the United States.⁠[16][7]

In an interview with VentureBeat he linked the rise in demand to the coronavirus pandemic: “People have been desperate to get refunds from airlines; gyms have been shutting down and people are wanting to cancel,” adding that certain dispute categories, such as cancelling gym memberships, had grown almost 30-fold. The timeline on DoNotPay’s About page states that the company added COVID-19 features such as airline refunds and rent extensions that year.⁠[16][7]

Above the Law wrote on July 10, 2020 that DoNotPay had more than 50,000 subscribers to its self-help legal services and a staff of eight, with services including cancelling gym memberships, obtaining flight-delay compensation, skipping customer service phone queues and generating the documents to “sue anyone” in small claims court; explaining how he carried a defense from one city to others, he said: “So I built software that keeps the same defense, but changes the legalese to get people out of their tickets elsewhere.”⁠[5]

Bloomberg wrote in August 2021 that DoNotPay had raised $10 million and that he, aged 24, said the company was valued at about $210 million, more than double its previous valuation. The investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry, Tribe Capital, Day One Ventures and Felicis Ventures, and individuals including Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the crypto hedge fund Alameda Research. After FTX collapsed in November 2022, he was charged in the United States with misappropriating customer funds; in November 2023 a jury found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, in March 2024 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit about $11 billion, and in 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected his appeal.Open the full entry, then chief executive of FTXFTXFTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang that operated FTX.com, moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in 2021 and was valued at $32 billion in January 2022. In November 2022 it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection amid a liquidity crisis, and Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and related charges. Its reorganization plan took effect in January 2025, after which the FTX Recovery Trust began paying creditors in stages.Open the full entry, former CoinbaseCoinbaseCoinbase is a U.S. operator of crypto asset trading platforms, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, whose listed parent is Coinbase Global, Inc.; it went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq (ticker COIN) in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 in May 2025. It provides crypto trading, custody, staking, and stablecoin-related services, launched USDC with Circle, develops the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, and acquired the crypto options exchange Deribit in 2025; its venture investing operates as Coinbase Ventures.Open the full entry chief technology officer Balaji SrinivasanBalaji SrinivasanBalaji Srinivasan is an entrepreneur, investor and the author of The Network State, the founder of Network School, and a former chief technology officer of Coinbase and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Counsyl and 21, along with its successor product Earn.com, was involved in projects such as Coin Center, and has backed companies such as fomo as an angel investor.Open the full entry and UiPath chief executive Daniel Dines; the article adds that, on the word of people with knowledge of the matter, Yuri Milner’s DST GlobalDST GlobalDST Global is a technology investment firm founded by Yuri Milner in 2009 that focuses on growth-stage investments in internet companies worldwide; it has invested in companies including Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Airbnb and Spotify, and in 2026 led the US$400 million Series B round of the AI visual content company Higgsfield.Open the full entry also took part.⁠[8]

The article states that DoNotPay then had about 250,000 customers paying an annual fee of $144 and offered about 200 products; it was profitable, had not spent the $12 million raised the previous year, and expected to book losses as it invested in growth. Its “Robo Revenge” feature gave users credit card details that, once processed by a telemarketer, could be used to obtain the telemarketer’s details and sue in small claims court. The company planned to target small businesses, helping them comply with regulations such as website disclaimers and protect intellectual property through trademarks, a move he said was motivated by a class action that DoNotPay defeated earlier that year. Its near-term focus was the United States, with a possible expansion to the U.K. within 12 months.⁠[8]

He said: “We realized businesses are being shaken down all the time,” and “We’re trying to be a general counsel for all, similar to the way Intuit is leaned on as a tax adviser.”⁠[8]

On September 20, 2022 Fortune published a commentary by Aron Solomon on him, then 25, as a venture investor: the son of the investor Bill Browder, he used his success at DoNotPay as a springboard to launch his own venture fund, Browder Capital, and says he will always specialize in founders aged 16 to 25, often high school and college dropouts. His investment in Figma was relatively recent and not part of its seed round; on the Thursday before the article appeared, Figma announced that it had been acquired by AdobeAdobeAdobe (Adobe Inc.) is a software company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. Known for PostScript, PDF and creative software such as Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and After Effects, it moved its main creative products to Creative Cloud subscriptions from 2013 and expanded into digital marketing and generative AI; it is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ADBE.Open the full entry for $20 billion. The article states that he had invested in 23 Thiel Fellows, more than 10% of all participants, among them Adam Guild, founder of Owner.comOwnerOwner, also known as Owner.com, is a software company serving independent restaurants and other local businesses. Co-founded by Adam Guild and Dean Bloembergen, it combines websites, online ordering, customer relationship management, marketing and branded mobile apps, later adding point-of-sale systems and AI agents.Open the full entry, who says Browder invested from the very beginning, when Guild was 19.⁠[15]

In the article he says that he bets mainly on the founder and that young people do not need to work at a major company first before starting one. The individual investors in DoNotPay listed on DoNotPay’s About page include Dylan FieldDylan FieldDylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma and an angel investor. He studied computer science and mathematics at Brown University, explored browser-based design tools with Evan Wallace, and founded Figma in 2012 with support from the Thiel Fellowship. His personal history also includes collecting digital art and investing in companies such as Mercury and Socket.Open the full entry, chief executive of Figma.⁠[15][7]

The timeline on DoNotPay’s About page states that in 2022 the company launched a chatbot that contacts customer service representatives to cancel subscriptions and negotiate bills; the page also says that in a live demonstration on the Today Show the chatbot negotiated $100 off a utility bill.⁠[7]

In January 2023 DoNotPay planned to bring its AI into a real speeding-ticket case in February: the AI would “listen” to the hearing and generate responses using large language models and GPT-3, which the client would hear through AirPods and repeat to the judge; to get around courtroom bans on electronic devices, DoNotPay planned to rely on hearing-accessibility standards. Fortune adds that a separate U.S. case was to be heard over Zoom, possibly with a teleprompter or a “highly illegal” synthetic voice. He also offered $1,000,000 to anyone willing to act as the medium between the AI and the courtroom, “contingent on us coming to a formal agreement and all rules being followed.” LawNext writes that he offered to pay a lawyer $1 million to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United StatesThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court of the U.S. federal judiciary. Established under the Constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789, it has consisted since 1869 of a Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices and sits in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry guided by DoNotPay’s AI through AirPods.⁠[17][9]

On January 25, 2023 he tweeted that “after receiving threats from State Bar prosecutors, it seems likely they will put me in jail for 6 months,” and that DoNotPay was “postponing our court case and sticking to consumer rights.” He wrote: “There isn’t a lawyer that will get out of bed to help you with a $400 refund,” and “As much as I love to experiment, I have to stay out of jail if I want to help people fight ComcastComcastComcast Corporation is an American media and technology company headquartered in Philadelphia. It began in 1963 when Ralph J. Roberts bought a small cable television operator in Tupelo, Mississippi, and its businesses include Xfinity, Comcast Business, NBCUniversal, Sky, and Peacock. The company completed the spin-off of Versant Media in January 2026 and in June of that year announced plans to separate NBCUniversal and Sky into an independent public company, expected to take about a year.Open the full entry!” Fortune wrote that DoNotPay would remove some services, including defamation demand letters and divorce agreements, and add more consumer rights products.⁠[17]

LawNext writes that Kathryn Tewson, a paralegal in Washington StateWashington (state)Washington is a state on the Pacific coast of the northwestern United States; its capital is Olympia and its largest city is Seattle. Washington was admitted to the Union on November 11, 1889, as the 42nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 7,705,281 residents.Open the full entry, tested several of DoNotPay’s self-help legal tools and in a series of tweets called them effectively “smoke and mirrors,” saying that some gave the wrong law and others failed to deliver the promised product; he then took down DoNotPay’s legal tools. In a LawNext podcast interview published on February 9, 2023, he described the controversy as “a bit of a nothingburger.”⁠[9]

LawNext wrote on February 21, 2023 that Kathryn Tewson had filed a legal action against DoNotPay and him in New York state, the first step in a potential consumer class action. The ABA Journal wrote in a December 2023 magazine article that it was a pretrial discovery petition against DoNotPay and him in a New York state court, which a judge denied that March; her filing claimed that DoNotPay and he “appear to have lied to consumers and are pretending to have cutting-edge legal technology.” He said the allegations and Tewson’s findings were just a drop in the ocean compared with the tens of thousands of people his company had helped. The article adds that Tewson says she plans to file a consumer protection lawsuit against DoNotPay with her attorney, Remy Green, and that in October 2023 the two said they expected to file it in the coming months.⁠[18][10]

In March 2023 Jonathan Faridian, a paying DoNotPay customer represented by Edelson PC, sued DoNotPay, Inc. individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Francisco; the complaint is dated March 3, 2023. It pleads a single cause of action, violation of section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code (the Unfair Competition Law), alleges that DoNotPay’s principal place of business is in San Francisco, and does not name Joshua Browder as a defendant. The case later proceeded in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California as case No. 23-cv-1692.⁠[19][20][21]

The complaint alleges that DoNotPay is not a lawyer or a law firm, has no law degree, is not licensed in any jurisdiction and is not supervised by a lawyer, yet practised law in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry without a license. Faridian says he used DoNotPay to draft demand letters, an independent contractor agreement, two LLC operating agreements and several court filings, but the demand letters were never delivered, one returned letter being a blank page bearing his name, and the delays may have left his claims time-barred; he says he would not have paid had he known DoNotPay was not a lawyer. The suit sought, for a class of all paying DoNotPay customers in California, restitution of all amounts paid and other compensation.⁠[19][20]

DoNotPay said in a statement: “DoNotPay respectfully denies the false allegations,” adding that the named plaintiff had submitted dozens of successful cases and that the cases cited in the suit were meritless; it said that the plaintiff’s lawyer had personally been paid hundreds of millions of dollars from class actions, so it was no surprise that he would accuse an AI of the “unauthorized practice of law,” and said: “We will defend ourselves vigorously.”⁠[20]

The ABA Journal wrote in a December 2023 magazine article that DoNotPay filed a motion to compel arbitration in the case in April 2023, and that in a June filing Edelson PC, representing Faridian, asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to deny it.⁠[10]

MillerKing, a small IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry law firm, sued DoNotPay in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois for false advertising, deceptive trade practices and the unauthorized practice of law, seeking to represent all U.S. law firms in a class action; it argued that DoNotPay falsely suggested an affiliation with licensed attorneys and that MillerKing, as a direct competitor, was harmed. On November 17, 2023 Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel dismissed the suit because MillerKing lacked standing, having not adequately alleged lost clients or reputational harm, and allowed the firm to file an amended complaint; she wrote: “The court will not infer that MK has suffered harm through lost clients just because DNP has gained them.”⁠[22][23]

The ABA Journal wrote in a December 2023 magazine article that DoNotPay had filed a motion to dismiss in May 2023; the article’s editor’s note states that Nancy J. Rosenstengel granted the motion and gave MillerKing until December 18 to file an amended complaint, and gives the date of the ruling as November 11.⁠[10]

In comments to ReutersReutersReuters is an international news agency founded in London in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter and is now the news business of Thomson Reuters. It provides text, photo, video, and graphics coverage to media and institutional clients and distributes it through channels such as Reuters Connect.Open the full entry quoted by the ABA Journal, he said he was “thrilled” with the dismissal: “It’s proven what we believed from the very beginning: That there was no concrete harm.”⁠[22]

On June 5, 2024 a status update filed in the Faridian case showed that the parties had reached a settlement in principle; the ABA Journal wrote that no details were available. Above the Law wrote in September 2024 that Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (known as Wilson Sonsini) is a law firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, founded in 1961 and known for serving technology, life sciences, and other growth companies and their investors; it served as counsel on the initial public offerings of companies including Apple, Netscape, Google, and Tesla. As of December 2025 the firm had more than 1,000 lawyers, and its 2025 revenue was $1.4 billion.Open the full entry, which he hired for the FTC matter, also represented him in the recently settled California consumer class action.⁠[13][24]

On September 25, 2024 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Operation AI Comply, an enforcement sweep that included DoNotPay. The Commission voted 5–0 to authorize an administrative complaint and a proposed administrative consent order; the complaint names DoNotPay, Inc. as the only respondent and its numbered paragraphs refer to him only as “the Chief Executive Officer for DoNotPay.” The complaint states that DoNotPay is incorporated in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, has its principal office in London, United Kingdom, and transacts business in San Francisco and throughout the United States.⁠[25][26]

The complaint alleges that DoNotPay promoted its subscription service for U.S. consumers as “the world’s first robot lawyer” and an “AI lawyer” that could draft “ironclad” demand letters and sue anyone at the press of a button; a General Membership cost $36 every two months (offered since 2019), and a Small Business Protection Plan, offered since 2021, cost $49.99 a month. It alleges that the service was not designed to operate like a human lawyer, asked few facts and produced generic output; that DoNotPay did not test the accuracy of its legal features and did not employ or retain attorneys to do so; that its claim to check small business websites for hundreds of federal and state law violations based solely on an email address, warning that unaddressed violations could cost a business $125,000 in legal fees, was ineffective; that some features advertised with a General Membership were not available; and that a quotation attributed to the Los Angeles Times on its website came from a high-school student’s opinion piece on the Los Angeles Times’ High School Insider website, a user-generated content platform for young people.⁠[26][25][27]

The complaint also states that on or about November 16, 2021 the Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California opened an investigation into DoNotPay over allegations of the unauthorized practice of law; that on or about January 21, 2022 DoNotPay’s chief executive promised the State Bar that DoNotPay would stop calling the service the “world’s first robot lawyer,” which the complaint alleges it continued to do; and that on June 15, 2023 the State Bar sent a cease-and-desist notice alleging that the service amounted to the unauthorized practice of law; the same day DoNotPay affirmed that it had removed all mentions of “robot lawyer” from its website and social media, all products on its website that let consumers generate legal documents, and any mention of “sue anyone” from its website, while the complaint alleges that its website and social media account continued to promote the service as the “World’s First Robot Lawyer” and to advertise “sue anyone” claims.⁠[26]

Under the proposed order DoNotPay agreed to settle and to pay $193,000, to notify consumers who subscribed between 2021 and 2023 about the limits of its law-related features, and not to claim that its service can substitute for any professional service without evidence; the FTC was to publish the consent package in the Federal Register and decide after a 30-day public comment period whether to make it final. DoNotPay did not admit wrongdoing.⁠[25][28]

A concurring statement by Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, joined by Chair Lina M. Khan, says that for consumers to benefit from AI “they must be able to trust the claims that companies make about its capabilities,” and that the settlement does not mean consumers should default to expensive professional services or that companies should not offer innovative products that reduce demand for high-priced lawyers; Commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson issued a separate concurring statement. Announcing the cases, Lina M. Khan said: “The FTC’s enforcement actions make clear that there is no AI exemption from the laws on the books.”⁠[29][25][28]

A DoNotPay spokesperson’s statement to Ars Technica, quoted by the ABA Journal, said the company “is pleased to have worked constructively with the FTC to settle this case and fully resolve these issues, without admitting liability,” and that “The complaint relates to the usage of a few hundred customers some years ago (out of millions of people), with services that have long been discontinued.”⁠[27]

The FTC’s Decision and Order in the matter of DoNotPay, Inc. (Docket No. C-4812, FTC File No. 232-3042) is dated January 14, 2025; the FTC’s press release of February 11, 2025 states that after receiving five comments the Commission voted 5–0 on January 16, 2025 to approve the final order and send responses to the commenters. The FTC’s case page lists the final complaint, the Decision and Order and the letters to commenters under January 17, 2025. The order records that DoNotPay “neither admits nor denies” the allegations of the complaint.⁠[30][31][32]

The order requires DoNotPay to pay the FTC, within 30 days of its effective date, $193,000 held in escrow by its counsel, which the Commission may use for consumer redress and related purposes; to email, within 180 days and in the prescribed form, customers who became new subscribers between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023, and to file a sworn report on the notice program after one year; and not to advertise that its service performs like a real lawyer without sufficient evidence. The order runs for 20 years.⁠[30][31]

As of November 2026 DoNotPay’s website carries the title “Your AI Consumer Champion,” and the press section of its About page calls him “DoNotPay CEO.” The About page timeline states that in 2024 the company distributed its first dividend, sending seven figures to employees and investors; the page lists Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Coatue, Felicis Ventures, Lux and others among its backers and Scott BelskyScott BelskyScott Belsky is an American entrepreneur, author and early-stage investor who co-founded the creative portfolio platform Behance; after Adobe acquired it in 2012 he served as Adobe’s chief product officer and chief strategy officer. Since 2025 he has been a partner at the independent film studio A24 and founder of A24 Labs, and since September 2026 also a Product Advisory Partner at Union Square Ventures (USV).Open the full entry, Balaji Srinivasan, Daniel Dines and The Chainsmokers among its individual investors. It also states that DoNotPay received the American Bar Association’s 2020 Louis M. Brown Award for increasing legal services to people of modest means, and lists Emily ChangEmily ChangEmily Chang is a Bloomberg technology journalist and anchor, host and executive producer of the Bloomberg Originals programs The Circuit and Posthuman, and author of Brotopia.Open the full entry’s Bloomberg interview with him.⁠[33][7]

MIT Technology Review’s 2017 Innovators Under 35 page, headed “Joshua Browder, 20,” profiles him and DoNotPay, stating that he wants to disrupt the roughly $200 billion legal services market with chatbots and quoting him: “It should never be a hassle to engage in a legal process”; it adds that he says 375,000 people had avoided about $9.7 million in penalties with DoNotPay and that he wanted to simplify processes such as applying for political asylum or getting a divorce.⁠[34]

In 2017 he was a speaker at Stanford Law School’s CodeX FutureLaw conference. His speaker biography for HumanX 2025 states that he was named to MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35” and recognized by the Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times (FT) is a London-based English-language business and financial news organization, known for its salmon-pink newspaper and its motto “Without Fear and Without Favour.” It was owned successively by the British Pearson group and Japan’s Nikkei Inc., and today digital subscriptions are its main source of revenue.Open the full entry as one of the top legal innovators in America; it also says that DoNotPay has automated more than 200 consumer rights processes, has raised $24 million from Silicon Valley investors and has won more than 2 million cases for its customers.⁠[11][35]

His father is the investor Bill Browder, chief executive of Hermitage Capital Management and a critic of Russian corporate governance; his great-grandfather Earl Browder was a former head of the Communist Party and twice a candidate for President of the United States.⁠[15][2]

DoNotPay: Official website: https://donotpay.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[36]

X: Public account: https://x.com/jbrowder1 (opens in a new window).⁠[12]