{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/legal-support-workers-all-other/",
  "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": "Legal Support Workers, All Other",
    "soc_code": "23-2099",
    "category": "Legal",
    "us_employment": 46760,
    "median_annual_wage": 72110
  },
  "verdict": "COOKED",
  "risk_resistance": 27,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 7,
    "embodiment": 4,
    "liability_shield": 3,
    "trust_premium": 6,
    "judgment_accountability": 7
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "A 7 rather than a 4 reflects the residue that still breaks automation — walking a physical exhibit through a clerk's window before a 4pm filing deadline, calling a county recorder whose index isn't online, reconciling a docket entry that PACER and the state e-filing system report differently — but the bulk of the day (privilege-log coding, deposition digests, Bluebook cite-checking, USPTO Office Action docketing, form 1040-style intake preparation) is already text-in/text-out.",
    "embodiment": "A 4 is the ceiling for desk work with an errand attached: courier runs to the courthouse, pulling boxed records from a file room, operating a scanner or Bates-stamping machine — physical, but climate-controlled, scheduled, and increasingly displaced by e-filing mandates.",
    "liability_shield": "A 3, not a 0, because docket and compliance clerks can be personally sanctioned for a missed statutory deadline or a certificate-of-service defect, but there is no bar admission, no notarial commission required in most postings, and the supervising attorney's signature — not yours — is what the court holds responsible under Rule 11.",
    "trust_premium": "At 6 you have named relationships — the assigned deputy clerk who tells you which judge's chambers wants paper copies, the outside counsel who calls you directly for a status — but the client hired the firm, retains the partner, and would never notice if the docket summary arrived from a different desk.",
    "judgment_accountability": "A 7 sits at the bottom of real discretion: you decide whether a document is responsive or privileged on first pass, whether a conflicts hit needs escalation, whether a hallucinated citation in a draft gets flagged — consequential calls, but each one is reviewed by a licensed attorney before it leaves the building, and the deadline calendar itself is dictated by rule, not by your reading of ambiguity."
  },
  "rationale": "This residual category covers legal analysts, docket and compliance clerks, court program support, patent and trademark support staff, and similar unlicensed roles whose day is document review, docket tracking, records searches, form preparation, and summarizing case files — exactly the text-in/text-out work generative AI does at usable quality. Almost none of it requires a license or a signature, so no regulatory shield holds the work in human hands. The surviving slice is court- and client-facing coordination, chain-of-custody and filing accountability, and the judgment to spot when an AI-produced summary or citation is wrong before an attorney relies on it.",
  "outlook": "Headcount in this catch-all shrinks materially over ten years as document and docket work consolidates into AI-assisted workflows, with the remaining jobs reshaped around verification, court-facing logistics, and litigation-tech administration.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Courts extending Rule 11-style AI certification duties down to support staff: several federal judges (e.g. standing orders in N.D. Tex., E.D. Tex. after Mata v. Avianca) already require a signed certification that AI-generated citations were human-verified. If bar rules or firm malpractice insurers require a named non-attorney verifier of record for each AI-drafted filing — as some insurers now condition cyber/malpractice riders on documented human review — the verification role becomes contractually mandatory rather than discretionary.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "USPTO practice: registered patent agents/practitioners already hold a signature-and-duty-of-disclosure obligation, and the USPTO's 2024 AI guidance requires a signer to personally review AI-assisted submissions. If patent/trademark support staff are pushed to obtain agent registration to sign, part of this SOC bucket acquires a genuine shield.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: as bulk summarization, docket entry and records search automate, what remains is adversarial verification — catching hallucinated citations, mismatched exhibit numbers, sealed-document handling, and jurisdiction-specific filing rejections. Task-mix shift alone raises the resistance of the residual role without any new rule, though it shrinks headcount.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "E-discovery chain-of-custody and sanctions exposure: if courts continue issuing spoliation sanctions where AI-assisted review missed responsive documents (FRCP 37(e) motions are rising), the custodian-of-record and privilege-log escalation calls become named, consequential decisions owned by support staff rather than clerical output.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "No plausible route to a higher trust premium — clients buy attorney judgment, never the support layer, and nothing signals this changing. Embodiment is fixed near zero. Even with every lever, this is a much smaller occupation doing a narrower verification job; the levers raise the score of the survivors, not the headcount."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 44440,
        "wage": 56120
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 43150,
        "wage": 58930
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 45080,
        "wage": 58400
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 45310,
        "wage": 59540
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 46090,
        "wage": 59790
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 46480,
        "wage": 62340
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 43760,
        "wage": 67700
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 47380,
        "wage": 68760
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 46760,
        "wage": 72110
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 5.2,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}