Overview
1. Automation Risk
2. User Poll
3. Growth
4. Wages
5. Volume
Decription
Resources
Comments

Lawyers

AUTOMATION RISK
CALCULATED
22%
risk level
POLLING
35%
Based on 5,308 votes
LABOR DEMAND
GROWTH
9.6%
by year 2031
WAGES
$135,740
or $65.25 per hour
Volume
707,160
as of 2022
SUMMARY
JOB SCORE
8.1/10

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Comments (137)

Automation risk

22% (Low Risk)

Low Risk (21-40%): Jobs in this level have a limited risk of automation, as they demand a mix of technical and human-centric skills.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Some very important qualities of the job are difficult to automate:

  • Negotiation

  • Persuasion

Some quite important qualities of the job are difficult to automate:

  • Social Perceptiveness

  • Originality

User poll

35% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 22% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Lawyers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?






Sentiment

The following graph(s) are included wherever there is a substantial amount of votes to render meaningful data. These visual representations display user poll results over time, providing a significant indication of sentiment trends.

Sentiment over time (quarterly)

Sentiment over time (yearly)

Growth

Very fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Lawyers' job openings is expected to rise 9.6% by 2031

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2021 and 2031
Updated projections are due 09-2023.

Wages

Very high paid relative to other professions

In 2022, the median annual wage for 'Lawyers' was $135,740, or $65 per hour

'Lawyers' were paid 193.1% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $46,310

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Volume

Significantly greater range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2022 there were 707,160 people employed as 'Lawyers' within the United States.

This represents around 0.48% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 209 people are employed as 'Lawyers'.

Job description

Represent clients in criminal and civil litigation and other legal proceedings, draw up legal documents, or manage or advise clients on legal transactions. May specialize in a single area or may practice broadly in many areas of law.

SOC Code: 23-1011.00

Resources

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Comments

Leave a comment

Hopla pink (Low) says
AI will replace legal research, sure. But AI can't analyze evidence and put forward the type of arguments a lawyer can. It can only ease that process by helping to search through data.

Also, how could you have a robot as a compliance officer? Even if AI could spit out all the rules, you'd need someone to help you design your operations accordingly.

These are but a few examples. AI could reduce the demand for lawyers, but it couldn't replace them.
Nov 16, 2022 at 12:08 PM
MANKUT (Moderate) says
I really think that automation and robots can replace a human in doing these jobs. Indeed, persuasion and knowledge are more important for this type of job than originality, for example.
Oct 25, 2022 at 06:02 PM
Maisy Winters (No chance) says
You need to be tactful, compassionate, and respond to human emotions to be successful in law.
Sep 27, 2022 at 01:29 AM
tyler (Low) says
people want a human representing them and not have a glitch in the system that can potentially change the outcome of the trial
Sep 26, 2022 at 03:52 PM
Ryan (Uncertain) says
The risk should be much higher. Certain types of lawyers are safer than others. Criminal lawyers likely enjoy much higher safety than civil litigators, and especially transactional attorneys.

Even assuming lawyers don't cease to exist, cases that currently require 10 attorneys to staff will likely only require 1 or 2 in an age of transformational AI. Lawyers today should be mindful of this and plan accordingly.

I have a hard time seeing the need for more than a handful of transaction attorneys in an age of transformational AI. The legal industry will survive, as only humans can be licensed attorneys, but it will dramatically reduce in size.

Companies will use AI to reduce their need for legal services, and legal services will require far fewer attorneys to render.
Aug 28, 2022 at 05:31 PM
Mohamed (No chance) says
Law is not just some rules that control our lives. It has a social aspect of how we, as human communities, interact with each other and understand problems from other perspectives.

An AI won't understand that. We can't put our fate on AI. The AI has limitations, unlike us humans.
Jul 09, 2022 at 07:28 PM
Paul Allen (likely) says
Probably should be 20% as of now. There is definitely pushback, but after collecting every bit of data (legally), anything could be extrapolated. From quantizing logic, morals, discrepancies, to the most minuscule details that could never be obtained by a legal team. This could be accomplished by feeding the A.I. previous cases and analyzing every bit of it to understand the outcome of each of those cases. Lawyers will need to be present as an advocate for the A.I.'s work. This will potentially lead to lower costs as well as more fair and robust trials. Though people's ego tends to interfere with progression, so who knows. Carry on.

Obviously, the heart rate thing was a joke... kinda lol.
Mar 28, 2022 at 05:51 PM
Noice (Uncertain) says
I mean, Lawyers are creative, original, and not really something that can be copied by a machine, but with the technology we have, it could happen.
Mar 23, 2022 at 10:39 PM
A Robot (Low) says
Robots would have to have a very sophisticated AI to be able to defend someone in court. Even if they did, they would be super expensive. So, nobody in their right mind would actually buy one.
Mar 03, 2022 at 03:42 PM
Jimmy Allen Davis (Highly likely) says
I am an engineer, physicist, and lawyer.

I am coding an expert system to act as my legal assistant and paralegal. I plan on expanding it into the AI field and having it, and many iterations of it handling my cases.

I am also working on using the same code to perform mediation as well.
Feb 12, 2022 at 06:15 PM
Khan Sab (Moderate) says
Most of the well-paying firms tend to serve big corporations, and as technology progresses, I am sure there will be some sort of technology that will ease the tediousness of the law.

This won't mean attorneys are out of a job, but it does mean that most of the complexities in the job will ease down.
Jan 21, 2022 at 11:32 PM
Eric Martinez (Low) says
It is challenging to completely replace this occupation with robots, but it can be partially replaced. A.I. lawyers could complement the work of a real lawyer, and maybe the very junior level could be replaced in some areas of the law.
Jan 13, 2022 at 02:02 AM
Mr. Pessimist-Realist (Uncertain) says
NLP developments mean a lot of the textual/case analysis work can be readily automated, while most commercial legal functions could be automated in-house save for the highest-level litigation work available. Paralegals will be extinct. Criminal lawyers should do just fine. The only thing saving the majority of the field for the future would be cultural/institutional lag, as execs and clients remain reluctant to entrust all their legal rights and remedies to disembodied data models. Most would prefer a real neck to hang if things went wrong, after all. I'd like to see a neural network come up with the Double Irish, though.
Dec 04, 2021 at 05:20 PM
Xenu B (No chance) says
Lawyers control laws passed by their profession and they will simply outlaw AI to replace them. We will see some streamlining.
Nov 27, 2021 at 10:52 AM
Armando Rodríguez Cervantes (Low) says
The practice of law requires many skills that are not easily substitutable by robots and algorithms, such as empathy, social intelligence and understanding of socio-cultural contexts, to propose solutions or to manage conflicts between individuals or groups.
Nov 14, 2021 at 01:43 AM
Patrick (Uncertain) says
There are many layers to this activity and it can't be generalized. Some specializations (like Mass Lawsuits) are in danger, while others are less likely to be quickly automatized.
Oct 06, 2021 at 12:51 PM
Jon Kent (Low) says
Certain aspects of legal work are more prone to disruption by AI, from the generation and review of wills and other typical legal documents to more advanced research capacities, though in-person litigation would seem to be an unlikely skill to be overtaken in the near term.
Sep 22, 2021 at 03:43 PM
anonymous (Highly likely) says
lawyer work is mostly tedious and works by a set of rigid rules that AI can easily be trained on once it has decent language recognition, which will happen in less than a decade
Aug 07, 2021 at 09:44 PM
Death Angel says
I hate Lawyers just like Politicians. Both "professions" need AI who don't like corruption...
Aug 05, 2021 at 12:00 PM
YJ (Low) says
The reason why I have thoughts of this occupation will only have a small chance of being replaced is because this occupation requires logic, creative thinking skills, and good communication skills to persuade others, which the AI could not do because all of the cases that the lawyer will meet is diverse and different.
Aug 04, 2021 at 11:49 AM

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