P H O T O B Y P I E R R E D E S R O S I E R S

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.