AI exposure: Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
Perform secretarial duties using legal terminology, procedures, and documents. Prepare legal papers and correspondence, such as summonses, complaints, motions, and subpoenas. May also assist with legal research.
Reading this score
computed59.1% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants at the 94th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 3.3 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.
No single friction dominates this occupation. The strongest is context at 1.39 out of 3 and the weakest is embodiment at 0.36, which is a narrow spread. Where nothing structural stands in the way, exposure tracks capability almost directly, and capability is the thing that changes every quarter.
The most exposed thing this job does is Schedule and make appointments, at 93.3%. The least is Make photocopies of correspondence, documents, and other printed matter, at 20.0%. A gap of 73.3% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within office and administrative support occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 51 roles in the group is 54.6%, and only 16 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 14 tasks, 13 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 1 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take capability alone, since there is little structural friction here to slow adoption once a system can do the work. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Task by task
14 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule and make appointments. | 93.3% | 6.7% | 0.0% | 4.00 | exposed |
| Review legal publications and perform database searches to identify laws and court decisions relevant to pending cases. | 93.3% | 6.7% | 0.0% | 3.31 | exposed |
| Receive and place telephone calls. | 86.7% | 13.3% | 0.0% | 4.10 | exposed |
| Submit articles and information from searches to attorneys for review and approval for use. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 3.85 | exposed |
| Make travel arrangements for attorneys. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 3.81 | exposed |
| Attend legal meetings, such as client interviews, hearings, or depositions, and take notes. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 3.38 | exposed |
| Mail, fax, or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, and court officials. | 60.0% | 15.0% | 25.0% | 4.30 | exposed |
| Prepare, proofread, or process legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions, or pretrial agreements. | 58.3% | 29.2% | 12.5% | 4.29 | exposed |
| Draft and type office memos. | 52.5% | 22.5% | 25.0% | 3.41 | exposed |
| Assist attorneys in collecting information such as employment, medical, and other records. | 50.0% | 25.0% | 25.0% | 4.13 | exposed |
| Prepare and distribute invoices to bill clients or pay account expenses. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.30 | exposed |
| Complete various forms, such as accident reports, trial and courtroom requests, and applications for clients. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.11 | exposed |
| Organize and maintain law libraries, documents, and case files. | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 4.35 | exposed |
| Make photocopies of correspondence, documents, and other printed matter. | 20.0% | 5.0% | 75.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 3.32 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 0.36 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.43 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.82 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.39 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.82 | 0-3 |
What this means in practice
Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.