I glanced past Prefect. The security guard was still talking to the girls, leaning on their car with a kind of indolent confidence. The girls were smiling, but in that strained way that conveyed more fear than friendliness.
“The problem is that fewer people are paying for the higher tiers,” Prefect continued. “Which is losing the app money.”
“So we need to investigate to see if someonechanged the algorithm to be good at defending people,” I said. “Next, we’ll see if there are any puppies for you to kick.”
Prefect looked about as happy as I felt. “It’s a proprietary algorithm. If it has been hacked, it’s because someone used identity theft. It does fall under our purview.” He took a long drink of his coffee. “I was thinking we could look at a few cases before and after the win rate changed. See if the program responded differently.”
The security guard stood between the girls and their car. “Please,” one of the girls was saying. “We just want to go.”
“What’s the rush?” The guard was smiling smugly, leaning against the closed driver’s side door.
“Or,” I said, “we could test the app ourselves.”
Then I picked up a brick.
Lawyerbot was born, like so many inventions, out of opportunism.
It began in the late twenties, after a couple pandemics and an economic crash. Society came to a grinding halt and then tried to limp back to normalcy—to varied levels of success. One of the aspects of society that had trouble finding its feet was the justice system. There weren’t enough public defenders. Those who stuck around were overworked and underpaid. People found themselves on waiting lists, unable to afford a private attorney while waiting for a public defense lawyer’s schedule to free up. People lost theirjobs because they were stuck in jail or ended up with fines they couldn’t negotiate their way out of.
And so along came Lawyerbot: the first virtual defense lawyer.
Technically a defendant couldn’t be represented by an app. The founding fathers wouldn’t have approved. But a person could represent themselves pro se—and if they happened to be following the advice of an app, that was their choice.
It wasn’t really a choice. But the illusion made the whole system seem less dysfunctional.
If I’d gone to court, I probably would’ve been repped by Lawyerbot. My parents were middle class, but with three kids to feed and put through school, there hadn’t been a lot of money left over. I had occasionally imagined what my life would have been like if I hadn’t taken Prefect’s offer. If I had simply let the justice system take its course.
I probably would’ve ended up in a jail just like this one.
“I can’t believe you did that,” said Prefect. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He had pulled rank as my guardian to stay with me. “I had aplan, Augusta.”
“I can’t believe you can’t believe I would do that,” I replied. “Now, give me your phone.”
“I hate that I followed that sentence,” he muttered, and handed me his phone. He carried an old-fashioned one—a slip of glass that shifted from transparent toopaque as needed. I normally used my ringware and visor, but the cops had confiscated those.
While Prefect might have grumbled throughout the process of arresting me, he had still downloaded the app and made an account. “If you boot it up, it’s considered a billable hour,” he said. “Even if you don’t use it for the full hour. It’s still eighty dollars.”
I winced, imagining how hard it would be for most people to afford that. “Just for the lowest tier?”
He nodded.
I opened the app.
A cartoon of a man wearing a business suit appeared. He had dark hair, a serious face, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Prefect. I glanced at him, then back at the app.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just wondering if you were spawned by a computer program.”
Above the cartoon appeared a word bubble:Hello, I am Lawyerbot. Let’s get you justice!The bubble expanded to take up the whole screen, and I was in the chat.
I typed in,I have been arrested for throwing a brick through a private security guard’s windshield. He was harassing some women.
Three dots appeared. It was just for show. I wasn’t chatting with a person. When Lawyerbot first launched, the chatbot had responded to queries instantly and ithad put people off. Having those three dots, the pause, and the illusion that there was a person behind the screen made customers trust it more.
I am sorry to hear that, the chatbot wrote back.Have charges been filed?
No, I typed back.
