This story has been around for a week or so but it was interesting enough (to me at least) to share.

The 27B Stroke 6 blog over at Wired.com has an interesting story about a web-based ‘expert-system’ that has been ordered shut down by the California Court system because it was practicing law without a license. According to the story (see the story here), a lawsuit that was brought about by one of the users of the web-based system forced the owner of the system to shut it down. The article describes the judge’s ruling as the following:

A bankruptcy judge ruled that Ihejirika had committed fraudulent, unfair, or deceptive conduct through his computer program, and had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law.

Ihejirika was fined, enjoined from offering the same service in the future, and ordered to give up the fees he’d collected from nine customers in Northern California. He appealed, and last week the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.

[tags] Law, Information Technology [/tags]