Technicians and associate professionals · code 3411

Legal and related associate professionals

AI can draft the conveyancing documents. Keeping order in a courtroom is still a person.

Drafting legal documents and preparing property and share transfers are where AI could take a fair chunk. Keeping order in court and investigating theft it barely touches, which pulls the average back up.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Legal and related associate professionals perform support functions in courts of law or in law offices, provide services related to such legal matters as insurance contracts, the transferring of property and the granting of loans and other financial transactions, or conduct investigations for clients. Tasks include - (a) documenting court proceedings and judgements; (b) serving statements of claims, summonses, warrants, subpoenas and other court orders; (c) maintaining order in court and hearing rooms; (d) preparing legal documents including trial briefs, pleadings, appeals, wills and contracts, and preparing papers summarizing legal positions or setting out conditions of loans or insurance; (e) investigating facts, assembling evidence and researching relevant statutes, decisions and other legal documents to prepare cases; (f) advising clients on legal matters; (g) examining documentation such as mortgages, liens, judgements, easements, contracts and maps in order to verify properties’ legal descriptions and ownership; (h) preparing documents relating to transfer of real estate, stocks or other matters requiring formal registration; (i) investigating possible cases of theft of goods, money or information from business establishments and of other possible cases of unlawful behaviour by customers or employees; (j) investigating establishments or the circumstances and behaviour of persons on behalf of clients. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Bailiff - Judge’s clerk - Conveyancing clerk - Court clerk - Justice of the peace - Law clerk - Legal assistant - Paralegal - Private detective - Title searcher Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Lawyer - 2611 - Judge - 2612 - Notary - 2619 - Legal secretary - 3342

case administrator
court administrative officer
court bailiff
court clerk
conveyance clerk
legal assistant
private detective
court enforcement officer

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

61 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 1

324 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 10 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 39.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 39.1 = 60.9.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 1”: The mildest of the ILO’s four “exposed” groups.

This job rates 25.2 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Legal and related associate professionals 61

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

Drafting legal documents.
Property and conveyancing paperwork.
Legal research.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

Serving court orders.
Keeping order in court.
Investigations.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

Checking AI-drafted documents.
Legal tech support roles.
Digital courts.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

40 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 63 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

25 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 15 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

25 How
hands-on

15 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 6 US jobs .

finger skill 22 · hand skill 15.8 · cramped spaces 8.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 61, against an average of 39. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

61
Preparing documents relating to transfer of real estate, stocks or other matters requiring formal registration

Medium
56
Preparing legal documents including trial briefs, pleadings, appeals, wills and contracts and preparing, papers summarizing legal positions or setting out conditions of loans or insurance

Medium
46
Documenting court proceedings and judgements

Low
44
Serving statements of claims, summonses, warrants, subpoenas and other court orders

Low
40
Investigating facts, assembling evidence and researching relevant statutes, decisions and other legal documents to prepare cases

Low
39
Examining documentation such as mortgages, liens, judgements, easements, contracts and maps in order to verify properties‚Äô legal descriptions and ownership

Low
38
Advising clients on legal matters

Low
30
Investigating establishments or the circumstances and behaviour of persons on behalf of clients.

Low
20
Maintaining order in court and hearing rooms

Very Low
19
Investigating possible cases of theft of goods, money or information from business establishments and of other possible cases of unlawful behaviour by customers or employees

Very Low

10 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you: 63
AI does it for you: 40

Sidekick wins, by 24 points.

How good a match is this?

3 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 4422, 5991, 5992

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Out of every 100 conversations

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.28% of the conversations.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 4 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should paralegals and court clerks be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

Much of the paperwork is exposed. Property transfer and legal documents are rated Medium; recording proceedings, serving orders, research, checking property documents, advice and investigations are Low; keeping order in court rates Very Low. Legal AI is strong at drafting and research.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.