Paralegals and Legal Assistants

90% (Imminent Risk)

Imminent Risk (81-100%): Occupations in this level have an extremely high likelihood of being automated in the near future. These jobs consist primarily of repetitive, predictable tasks with little need for human judgment.

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

User poll

Sentiment

The following graph is 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.

Wages

Moderately paid relative to other professions

In 2023, the median annual wage for 'Paralegals and Legal Assistants' was $60,970, or $29 per hour

'Paralegals and Legal Assistants' were paid 26.9% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $48,060

Wages over time

Comments

Marty (Moderate) 5 months ago

There certainly will be fewer supporting staff required in law firms. However, I'm skeptical that AI will replace more than 50% of people in this field; a human person is always more versatile in the office environment.

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Logan (No chance) 7 months ago

No robot can ever interview people and make them feel comfortable like a human can.

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Stephen Watkins (Highly likely) 1 year ago

Considering how lawyers and law firms want to maximize profits, they will do whatever they can to minimize costs--including human wages--and enhance profits, and that will include removing workers and replacing them with tools which can do their jobs more effectively.

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Amanda (Low) 1 year ago

Where I work in family law I have to take into account all scenarios of someone’s life and add everything up. There is so much critical thinking that needs to be done and no two cases are the same as no two people are the same. You cannot automate my job. You can make it easier with technology but you cannot plan for the crazy things that come up in people’s lives.

A robot cannot tell when a client or opposing counsel is lying to it. Also a lot of times we have to poke and prod into people’s lives and ask them questions they don’t want to answer or tell anyone. This type of questioning I don’t believe a robot would be able to know to poke deeper into someone’s life or question why. If someone said no to a question a robot would take that at face value and not pry deeper to get the truth. So I think that my job will be safe as long as there are still attorneys practicing law.

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Ivan (Moderate) 2 years ago

AI could do a resume of a caselaw faster and more efficient than any paralegal. It could probably do a complete legal research, given the right parameters, in a matters of seconds.

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Anella Harmeyer (Low) 2 years ago

The ability to analyze laws and precedents and apply them to court cases takes a high level of critical thinking skills.

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Gean M (Highly likely) 2 years ago

With the launch of the GPT3 chat, it will no longer be necessary to have an army of paralegals to analyze the text of legal cases.

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Kris (Highly likely) 3 years ago

I work in this field and have already witnessed automation taking over with e-filing. I agree it is being replaced by automation. There will always be a niche or exception in the work that will require human oversight. It's not a growing field! Risky and underpaid!

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