COOKED
The bulk of this work — reviewing license applications for completeness, entering case data, preparing dockets and calendars, calculating and receipting fees, issuing routine certificates and permits — is exactly the structured form-and-record processing that online portals plus AI intake now handle end to end. What holds is the in-person counter and courtroom presence: swearing witnesses, handling paper filings and evidence, calming distressed litigants, and certifying records under statutory authority. The modal worker is a records-and-counter clerk in a municipal office, not a deputy clerk of court running a courtroom; the latter tier is meaningfully more protected.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $39,380 → $48,700 -1.1% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+3% 180,400 → 185,900 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +3% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~18,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
CrierRecorderRegisterLaw ClerkRegistrarTag ClerkTax ClerkCase ClerkCity ClerkTown ClerkCivil ClerkCourt ClerkCourt CrierCounty ClerkDocket ClerkDog LicenserFelony ClerkMinute ClerkAppeals ClerkCircuit ClerkCity RecorderLicense ClerkTraffic ClerkUtility Clerk
Holding it up: liability shield . Weakest point: task resistance .
Core tasks are already automatable Checking a marriage-license application against a statutory checklist, keying case captions and dispositions into Odyssey or Tyler, generating the next-term docket from filing dates, and receipting a fine to the right fund code are all rule-bound steps that e-filing portals and self-service license kiosks already execute without a clerk in the loop, which is why this sits at 5 rather than mid-range.
Some physical or field component A 7 reflects the real physical residue: stamping and date-filing paper pleadings, pulling and refiling case jackets, taking custody of exhibits, notarizing in person, and standing at a public counter — all inside a climate-controlled courthouse or city hall, not in the field, so nothing here approaches the uncontrolled-environment band.
Certification preferred, not legally required Deputy clerks are typically sworn or bonded and certify records under state statute, and some states require a certified municipal clerk credential, but the seal derives from the office rather than a personal professional licence — a judge or city attorney absorbs consequences for a bad ruling or ordinance, and 8 marks that oath-and-bond middle ground rather than 12-plus personal exposure.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs The recurring calls — is this filing timely, does this application lack a required document, what fee schedule applies, is this record sealed — resolve against court rules, ordinances, and retention schedules, and the standing instruction on genuine ambiguity is to refer it to the judge or clerk of court, which caps discretion at 6.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (5/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (8/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (6/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (6/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 20 of this occupation's 32 points (63%).
Embodiment (7/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 45/100 — EXPOSED.
Genuine two-tier occupation: the routine tier (data entry, fee receipting, form completeness) automates first, leaving courtroom deputy work — swearing witnesses, real-time minute entries during hearings, exhibit custody, chain-of-custody logging, handling self-represented and distressed litigants at the counter. If a jurisdiction consolidates staffing so remaining clerks are courtroom/records-custodian deputies rather than intake processors, measured resistance of the remaining job rises even with no new law.
State statutes and court rules that name a specific human deputy clerk as the officer who attests, certifies, and affixes the seal to filings and records — e.g. rules requiring a sworn clerk's signature for certified copies, writs, and judgment entries, and state e-filing rules (as in several state judicial council orders) that make the clerk personally responsible for accepting or rejecting a filing. If a state expands this to require a named clerk to countersign any AI-assisted docket entry or case-initiation decision, and to be answerable for defects, the shield rises. Also notary-commission and oath-administration statutes reserving these acts to a commissioned human.
Task-mix shift plus explicit rule assignment: as portals absorb intake, the residual work is the clerk's quasi-judicial calls — rejecting a non-conforming filing, sealing or redacting under privacy rules, setting or rescheduling calendar conflicts, determining indigency/fee-waiver eligibility, issuing bench warrants or marriage licenses where statute gives the clerk discretion. If a court adopts a written policy that AI output on these is advisory only and the clerk owns the call (mirroring how some courts already forbid automated rejection of pro se filings), accountability concentrates in the surviving role.
Physical evidence and paper-original custody rules: statutes and evidence rules requiring wet-ink originals for wills, land records, bonds, and sealed exhibits, plus in-person identity verification for marriage licenses and some vital records. If states resist remote/electronic marriage licensing and keep original-document custody duties with the clerk's office, the physical component holds.
The limit. Even with every lever, this stays in the low-to-mid range: the modal worker is a municipal counter clerk, and the protections attach to the smaller deputy-clerk-of-court tier. Trust premium has no realistic route — no member of the public chooses a courthouse or DMV for its human staff, and budget pressure runs the other way. Headcount decline can coexist with rising scores for those who remain.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 9,340 | $59,320 +22% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 4,590 | $48,560 +0% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 3,600 | $51,110 +5% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 3,350 | $48,940 +0% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 3,100 | $57,180 +17% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 3,030 | $48,930 +0% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,840 | $49,030 +1% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 2,580 | $62,850 +29% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 550 | $83,490 +71% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,240 | $77,860 +60% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,820 | $77,750 +60% |
Park Record reports Heber City adopted a policy governing how municipal staff may use AI tools in their work.
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