COOKED
The core of this job — drafting and formatting pleadings from templates, transcribing dictation, proofreading correspondence, maintaining docket calendars, and assembling exhibit binders — is text-and-screen work that current AI plus e-filing systems already handle at usable quality. What remains is coordination that touches humans and physical objects: managing an attorney's calendar under conflicting demands, calming an anxious client on the phone, hand-delivering or physically filing when a portal fails, and catching a filing deadline error before it becomes malpractice. No license is required, so there is no regulatory floor holding the headcount in place; firms are already running leaner support ratios.
Core tasks are already automatable. Assembling a motion from a firm template, populating a table of authorities, transcribing dictated correspondence, and calendaring deadlines off a scheduling order are all pattern-driven text tasks that document automation and e-filing portals already perform end-to-end — the 6 rather than 2 reflects the residual manual work when a court's local rules or a judge's chambers copy requirement doesn't match any template.
Fully desk- and screen-based. Physical duties top out at walking a courtesy copy to chambers, running exhibits through a scanner, and stuffing service envelopes — real but occasional errands from a fixed desk, which is why this sits at 4 rather than in the single-digit-zero range of a pure remote transcriptionist.
No licence, no signature requirement. No state licenses legal secretaries; every pleading you draft goes out under the supervising attorney's bar number and Rule 11 signature, so a missed deadline becomes the attorney's malpractice exposure and your termination, not a disciplinary matter against you.
Some relationship component. The 7 comes from the attorney who has worked with you for nine years and knows you catch their errors, plus the repeat clients who ask for you by name when they call — but the relationship is with the firm and the lawyer, and a new hire inherits the docket in a week.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs. You decide which of three lawyers' conflicting calendar demands wins and whether a client call is urgent enough to interrupt a deposition, but statutes and local rules set the filing deadlines, formatting, and service requirements — the discretion is in triage, not in the calls that carry consequences.
Futurism reports a law firm cut hundreds of employees while shifting work toward AI tools.
The Global Legal Post reported that law firm Clifford Chance plans to cut back-office roles as it increases use of AI.
Has AI actually changed your work?