00:00Hi, my name is Christopher Maloney. I'm 23 years old and I currently live in New York and work in
00:06tech. I recently took my landlord, former landlord, to Small Claims Court over an illegally collected
00:12deposit and I successfully used ChatGPT to help me navigate the legal process and prepare my case.
00:19When I moved into the property, my landlord promised to fix a broken window in the bedroom
00:25that we noticed during our initial walkthrough in July. Unfortunately, that repair didn't happen
00:32until February of the following year, leaving me and my partner to endure freezing winter
00:37temperatures in the apartment. After I moved out, I wasn't even considering legal action.
00:43However, when my landlord sent an email accusing my partner and me of being filthy and then made
00:50excessive and questionable deductions from our deposit, I felt compelled to investigate further.
00:56Recovering the deposit money felt like an uphill battle, so I decided to run the lease agreement
01:02through ChatGPT to see if it could find anything concrete to build a case on. That's when I
01:08discovered that the deposit itself had been collected in violation of New York's tenant
01:13protection laws. These laws state that you cannot charge more than one month's rent as a security
01:18deposit. So from there, I realized I had the tools to fight back. So the court process was a bit
01:26intimidating. Initially, it just involved a bit of paperwork filing and showing what I was
01:32claiming, and the court was very helpful, as was ChatGPT, in preparing this. It was stressful,
01:39but I would get home from work every day, and I'd get right to work gathering stuff up,
01:45consulting the internet, consulting ChatGPT, and really making sure that I was covering
01:51all my bases. The day for court eventually came, and it was intense. I'd never been in
01:57a courtroom before. I had no idea how it really worked. I had a half-decent idea from the internet
02:03and ChatGPT of what to expect, but small claims is a bit more informal than one might expect
02:11compared to regular courts. So that took some getting used to, but I presented evidence
02:18that the deposit had been illegally collected, outlined how the delayed repair created unlivable
02:24conditions during the winter, and despite a spirited but ultimately baseless argument from
02:34my landlord that I owed significant amounts of money, the judge ultimately ruled in my favor,
02:40awarding me $1,180 and dismissing the landlord's counterclaim in its entirety. Ultimately,
02:47it feels like a victory, not just for me, but for tenants and the implications of the case and of
02:56AI, and it means a lot to me that after many, many years, all of history, people have not had
03:05the tools to defend themselves against landlords. Before the internet, let alone AI, you could go to
03:13your library and pull out a big legal book and try to find the exact law that specifically applies
03:21to you, whereas now I could just hand it over to an AI, read my lease, and with the paid premium
03:29versions of AI or ChatGPT, which is like $20, it doesn't just make stuff up. It can cite real
03:37legal code, send you links to the resources where you can see the exact legal text that applies to
03:44you. So ultimately, this feels like an endorsement of the power of that, and I mean, I could have
03:52gone in there, and it could have been completely wrong, and I could have been embarrassed, but it
03:57had real power, and it got me the justice that I thought was deserved. Of course, it's not a
04:03substitute for legal representation, but it's a powerful tool to help people get started and
04:09navigate complex systems with more confidence. I just hope that my story inspires others to
04:15explore how technology like this can help them fight for justice.
