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Society | DOI: 10.1145/2933414 Keith Kirkpatrick
Legal Advice on
the Smartphone
New apps help individuals contest traffic, parking tickets.
“The city has always given individuals the ability to fight their tickets,
whether through the mail, in person, or
online,” says Christian Fama, a co-own-er of WinIT and an executive at Empire
Commercial Services. “If a ticket isn’t
dismissible, the judge doesn’t dismiss
it.” However, the app, which allows
one to see what types of defenses are
available, provides users a way to easily
evaluate whether a challenge to a ticket
is likely to be successful without going
through the entire process of contesting a ticket.
If WinIT gets the ticket dismissed,
the user pays the company 50% of the
value of the fine; if the ticket is not dismissed, the user simply needs to pay
the fine in full, and owes WinIT no fee.
WinIT began its testing phase in
March 2015, and became available for
public use three months later. WinIT
currently processes hundreds of tickets
a day, and credits the success of the app
to Empire’s decades of success with
fighting tickets for commercial clients.
Fama says WinIT’s success rate has
exceeded his initial expectations, and
SUCCESSFULLY CHALLENGING a summons or ticket can be challenging and time-con- suming. Laypeople must understand the violation
that has occurred, determine the type
of defense that is legally acceptable,
and learn the type of documentation
most often used successfully to win a
dismissal or reduction of that violation
in that specific jurisdiction. For the
average person, the time and effort to
acquire such arcane knowledge often
outweighs the desire to fight the ticket.
Not surprisingly, applications designed to help access and navigate
through the legal system are quickly
gaining favor among the public. From
apps that help you fight parking and
traffic tickets to apps that report violations, mobile technology apps are stepping in to serve as an on-the-go legal
assistant. The use of a combination of
algorithms, technology, and specialized industry experience offer a more-efficient experience dealing with, and
within, the legal system.
Among drivers’ greatest annoyances are parking and traffic tickets.
The process of fighting a ticket traditionally has included conducting the
research to determine whether or not
a ticket might be dismissible; identifying, collecting, and submitting
the proper evidence, and then going
through a time-consuming process to
actually appeal the ticket, either via
mail or by heading to traffic court to
fight the ticket in person.
Enter WinIt ( appwinit.com), a mo-
bile app available on the iOS and An-
droid platforms that helps users by
providing an algorithm that identifies
the type of ticket, and then automati-
cally provides a list of the evidence or
documentation that is most likely to
help convince a judge to dismiss a tick-
et or reduce a fine. After the user pro-
vides the documentation, WinIt taps
into the parking-law experts of Empire
Commercial Services, a company that
has fought commercial parking viola-
tions for its customers in New York City
for more than 25 years. These special-
ists will then review the ticket (as park-
ing tickets in New York City have both a
pre-printed section and a section that
is filled out by hand by the parking of-
ficer) and the supporting documenta-
tion, and will contest the ticket on the
user’s behalf in court.
Once the app has been downloaded, users simply need to take a clear
picture of the ticket, and then submit
it to WinIt. The benefit to users is being able to quickly determine whether
or not it will be worth the time to fight
a ticket, via the app’s algorithm, which
prompts users to scan and attach
the documentation that would be required to successfully fight a violation
(such as a parking receipt, a photo of
the vehicle’s position, or a copy of the
vehicle registration). If a user cannot
provide such documentation, WinIt
says the likelihood a ticket will be dismissed is very low.