Monaco: Supporting access to justice
The fully-powered employment law service of AI (AI) is now available today and provides both advice and representation to consumers.
The Grapple Act, which does not employ lawyers, also provides support for disputes with insurance companies, including automobiles, households, content, income protection, pets and travel insurance.
It also helps to bill the airline for flight cancellations and delays in packages.
It was spun by a lawyer in Monaco, London. It says it is the UK's largest employment law specialist company representing individuals alone.
Users pay a subscription of £20 a month for legal advice and £50 a month to their representative, send a letter to their employer, and in response, pay based on the Grapple's legal name. During the testing phase, users paid 10% of what they received in compensation. Early reviews online shine.
Grapple Law is not a regulated law firm, unlike Garfield.law, the first AI-Only practice launched earlier this year.
Grapple founder Alex Monaco said A legitimate future He spoke to regulators, but it seemed little point in regulating the business without a lawyer. “Regulators are not designed to regulate software,” he said, but they may be trying to do it in the future for “branding and marketing purposes.”
The website makes it clear that the Grapple Act is not regulated and does not carry professional coverage insurance. But Monaco puts himself and his reputation at the forefront of the site to provide peace of mind to its users.
The service drafts a document for users to pursue claims in the Employment Court, but it is not on the record and the user must express himself.
“I want to work with a bot where you can go to court with you, and I have either of your laptop,” Monaco said.
In his view, if the case reached court, it was “it was broken or the lawyers weren't doing particularly good work… The court issue is that they're losing or losing.”
Monaco said he wanted to extend the Grapple Act to other areas of law. Certainly, yesterday it sent the first legal letter to Australia on behalf of a dyslexian 62-year-old man who verbally agreed to suspend his membership while Jim was undergoing cancer treatment, but charged $800 before it came to fruition.
The lawyers are currently crowdfunding for £500,000 to support this before raising a venture capital round of £30,500,000.
He has been working on grapple for five years, and at that point he has spent about £1 million on its development. He suggested that the type of legal work it handled was more complicated than Garfield's specialist debt recovery.
Monaco's lawyers use this technology – “it removes quite a lot of heavy lifts, making our lawyers' lives easier” – two years ago he reported that he was trying to white-label it for unions, charities and advice centres.
However, Monaco said it pivoted to first release consumer services as it was the most demanding place.
Although there is still a chairperson for Monaco's lawyer, he will move on to working full-time in the Grapple Act, overseeing the output so that it works as needed.
He said it helps access to justice. “There are always people who have the financial ability to direct their lawyers, and there are things they can do now.
“But I probably haven't accessed a law firm and frankly I'm not considering using a lawyer.”
Monaco's lawyers will continue to benefit from technology, he added, explaining that it “becomes a more hybrid company and uses lawyers and AI together in a more symbiotic relationship.”
Grapple is much faster than directing an attorney, he added. “It's not very personal, but there are a lot of people who are happy with it.”
