EXPOSED
Much of the visible workload is paperwork AI already handles well: writing Individualized Plans for Employment, case notes, eligibility determinations from medical records, benefits-eligibility screening, and matching clients to job listings or training programs. What does not automate is the sustained, in-person relationship with a client navigating disability, injury, or mental illness — motivating someone through a failed placement, reading resistance in a home visit, negotiating accommodations with a skeptical employer. Certification (CRC) and state agency rules require a credentialed human on the case, but that shield is administrative rather than a hard professional license with personal liability.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. IPE drafting, eligibility narratives from medical and psychological reports, labor-market surveys pulled from O*NET, and progress notes are the bulk of billable hours and already draft themselves, but the counterweight is real: job-site accommodation walkthroughs, motivational interviewing with a client who just lost a placement, and employer negotiation over a schedule change keep this at 11 rather than down with claims processing.
Some physical or field component. You are in cars a lot — home visits, job coaching on a warehouse floor, ergonomic assessments at a client's workstation, transport to interviews — but the work itself is talking and observing, not lifting or manipulating, so it sits at 9 rather than the 14+ of an occupational therapist doing hands-on transfers and modality treatment.
Certification preferred, not legally required. CRC certification plus state VR agency requirements mean a named counselor must sign eligibility determinations and authorize service purchases, and CARF/state audits do bite — but you carry no independent practice license, malpractice exposure sits with the agency or CARF-accredited provider, and a non-certified case manager can lawfully do much of the same work in many private and workers'-comp settings, which caps this at 8.
The human relationship is the product. Clients disclose criminal history, active substance use, psychiatric symptoms, and fear of losing SSDI to a specific person they have seen for two years; a transferred caseload measurably stalls, and employers agree to hire a client because they know you, not because a system recommended a match — that continuity is the intervention, hence 17.
Meaningful discretion. You decide whether someone with a fluctuating condition has a substantial impediment to employment, whether an unsuccessful closure or a costly retraining plan is justified, and when to close a case over a client's objection — high-stakes calls under Rehabilitation Act order-of-selection rules and appealable to a hearing officer, but bounded by written state eligibility criteria and supervisor sign-off on expensive authorizations, so 13 not 17.
Has AI actually changed your work?