Lawyers threaten startup offering AI parking ticket appeals

Israeli startup LoFrayer, which offers an AI-based platform for appealing against tickets for traffic and parking offences, has hardly marked a month since it was launched, and already finds itself in a battle with the Israel Bar Association. David Popovich, founder of the venture, has received a letter from the Bar Association’s Committee for the Defense of the Profession demanding that he should take down the website permanently within three days, or else the Bar Association will apply for a court injunction on the grounds that he is trespassing on its professional territory.

“If this step goes ahead, it will be a precedent. We can expect to see more such letters,” sources in the legal profession warn. “Every week more ventures arise in the legal sphere. It could become a war of attrition against a whole industry.”

Is Gemini also in the Association’s sights?

Popovich explains that the venture is not intended to replace legal consultation and that it does not produce a legal document such as a statement of claim. “The user scans the ticket, receives a chat with guiding questions, and in accordance with the answers the system generates a document with the grounds for cancellation, on the basis of a database that I have built from information that appears on the web, such as grounds for appeal and court rulings. It is not a matter of legal advice or individual consultation.”

Popovich says that he was surprised to receive the letter from the Bar Association. “Three weeks have gone by since I set up the venture, and I already realize that they are trying to take it down while it is small.”

Popovich explains that the nominal payment on the platform (NIS 35) for submitting the appeal covers operating costs only, and any user is entitled to file the document himself without payment, in which case the service is free of charge, and he is not running a commercial entity offering legal advice. He even accuses the Bar Association of inconsistency. “Why don’t you sue Google for Gemini? People pay twenty dollars a month and use it for legal claims as well. It’s easy to threaten the individual citizen who has no financial backing. I’m not scared.”

Popovich says that the importance of the venture lies in enabling the ordinary citizen to exercise his rights in a simple manner, after he himself dealt with ten tickets that he saw as illegal, and experienced the bureaucracy involved in the procedure for getting them cancelled.

Adv. Yaniv Lankri, Popovich’s attorney, adds, “It looks as though the Bar Association Committee for the Defense of the Profession has climbed up a high tree, in that it has failed to adapt to the artificial intelligence age. There is no legal bar to operating this welcome venture, and my client is ready to persuade the court of that, should a petition be filed.”

For its part, the Bar Association has no intention of climbing down. “We shall fight this,” says Adv. Yosef Weitzman, chairperson of the Committee for the Defense of the Profession and the signatory on the letter to LoFrayer. “The law is on this clear,” he says. “The only entity in the country entitled to provide legal representation or advice is solely a lawyer.” He says that the platform is a commercial entity offering legal advice using AI in exchange for payment, and that, in his view, is a clear offence under the law. “A lawyer who practices in this field approached me and said, ‘I represent people, and suddenly this venture comes along and says – Why are you consulting a lawyer, pay me.’” In response, Popovich says, “Show me one invoice of a lawyer who was paid for appealing against a NIS 250 ticket. I’m not stepping on the toes of any lawyer.”

As far as the comparison with the major AI tools is concerned, the Bar Association rejects it. “If a person consults Gemini, that’s his perfect right. It’s like consulting his neighbor,” Weitzman says. The difference, he says, lies in the fact that tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini offer a general experience that includes recipes, travel, and also legal advice, whereas LoFrayer operates as a commercial entity that acts as an alternative to a lawyer. “If we go in that direction, tomorrow there will be entities that replace doctors and offer drugs. It’s irresponsible,” he says.

At the same time, Weitzman stresses that he has no objection to lawyers being assisted by AI for certain tasks. “We’re not fighting that. On the contrary, lawyers make use of these tools.”

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on June 9, 2026.

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