{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/lawyers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Lawyers",
    "soc_code": "23-1011",
    "category": "Legal",
    "us_employment": 754500,
    "median_annual_wage": 159670
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 67,
  "contested": true,
  "near_boundary": true,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 10,
    "embodiment": 6,
    "liability_shield": 18,
    "trust_premium": 16,
    "judgment_accountability": 17
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Document review, research memos, and first drafts of pleadings and contracts — the bulk of hours for anyone under partner — are now machine-assisted, but taking a deposition, examining a hostile witness, reading a judge in a motion hearing, and negotiating a settlement across the table stay stubbornly manual, which is why this lands at 10 rather than 5 or 15.",
    "embodiment": "Courthouse appearances, client site visits, jail interviews, deposition rooms, evidence inspections, and closings put lawyers off the screen on a regular cadence, but the venues are controlled and much litigation practice has already moved to Zoom hearings and e-filing, so this sits at 6 rather than in the trades range.",
    "liability_shield": "Bar admission is jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction, Rule 11 makes the signing attorney personally sanctionable for filings, Model Rules 1.1 and 5.5 mean unauthorized practice is a criminal exposure and bad advice is a malpractice suit against a named individual — 18 not 20 only because in-house and staff roles diffuse some of the personal exposure.",
    "trust_premium": "Attorney-client privilege is a legal structure built entirely around one identified human, and clients pick counsel on referral and past representation rather than price sheet — a 16 rather than 19 because transactional and insurance-defense volume work is genuinely commoditized and clients switch firms on rate.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Whether to advise a plea, whether a disclosure triggers a duty to a third party, whether to withdraw over a client's intended fraud, how much risk a merger rep carries — these are underdetermined calls with prison, insolvency, or disbarment on the other side, and the lawyer owns them alone."
  },
  "rationale": "A large share of a lawyer's billable hours — memo drafting, contract markup, discovery review, precedent research, first-pass due diligence — is exactly what current models do at usable quality, and that leverage is already compressing associate-level work. What holds is the part only a licensed member of the bar can do: sign filings, appear in court, take depositions, negotiate live, and carry malpractice and ethical liability for the advice. The modal lawyer here is not a Big Law partner but a small-firm or in-house generalist whose value sits in client counsel and accountability, not document production.",
  "outlook": "Headcount growth flattens as first-year associate and document-review work collapses into software, while licensed lawyers who argue, negotiate, and sign remain in steady demand.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State bars and courts formalizing what is now ad hoc: standing orders on AI disclosure/certification in federal district courts (post-Mata v. Avianca), plus ABA Formal Opinion 512 duties, hardening into rules that a licensed attorney must personally verify and certify every AI-assisted filing and client deliverable, with Rule 11 sanctions attaching personally. Also UPL enforcement against AI legal-advice products — e.g., the DoNotPay FTC action and state UPL suits — being extended to bar non-lawyer-owned AI counsel; conversely, Arizona-style ABS liberalization and Utah's sandbox cut the other way.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: this occupation genuinely has two tiers. If first-pass discovery review, memo drafting, and precedent research are absorbed, the residual day is deposition strategy, live negotiation, judgment on settle-vs-try, and client counseling under ambiguity — work that scores far higher. The observable marker is firms shrinking first/second-year associate classes while lateral demand for 5+ year litigators and deal leads holds.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Malpractice insurers (e.g., ALAS, state bar mutuals) adding underwriting questions or premium differentials requiring documented attorney review of AI work product, and sophisticated clients writing 'named partner attention' or AI-use-disclosure clauses into outside counsel guidelines — a shift already visible in some corporate legal departments' OCGs. This converts human attention into a contractually priced item rather than a default.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine being held by courts not to extend to unsupervised AI-tool interactions, making the attorney's own judgment the only privileged locus of decision — raising the consequence-ownership of the human call.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Liability shield and judgment accountability are already near ceiling; the realistic upside is a few points, and it is concentrated in litigation and counseling roles. Document-production-heavy practice (doc review, small-firm form work, high-volume immigration or collections) has no route up on any dimension and is where the losses land regardless of what the bar does."
  },
  "adjudication": {
    "method": "two independent runs disagreed; merge is rounding-dependent",
    "outcome": "unresolved — published score left unchanged",
    "run_totals": [
      67,
      65
    ],
    "run_verdicts": [
      "SAFE",
      "EXPOSED"
    ]
  },
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 628370,
        "wage": 119250
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 642750,
        "wage": 120910
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 657170,
        "wage": 122960
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 658120,
        "wage": 126930
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 681010,
        "wage": 127990
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 707160,
        "wage": 135740
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 731340,
        "wage": 145760
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 747750,
        "wage": 151160
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 754500,
        "wage": 159670
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 20.1,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}