Legal secretaries
Legal secretaries file and maintain legal and other records, transcribe notes and dictation into typewritten form and perform other routine clerical tasks in legal practices.
- Employees (UK)
- 22k
- Median annual pay
- £24,263
- Exposure score ?
- 3.7/10 Low 10.0/10 Very high strict reading, with tools is 10.0/10 with-tools reading, strict is 3.7/10
- Wage exposure
- £198m £534m
Higher exposure than 92% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.
What this score means.
A few tasks in this role are within reach of AI, mostly paperwork, scheduling and routine writing. The shape of the role stays the same, and some parts get faster.
If you are in this role
Pick the two or three most repetitive things in your week and try a model on them. Most people underestimate what Claude or ChatGPT already does with admin-shaped work. The time you get back is the gain.
Almost every routine task in this role is within reach of today's models. Roles like this are being rebuilt, usually not by disappearing but by one person using AI to produce what several did.
If you are in this role
Be the person doing the rebuilding. People who learn to run this kind of work with AI become very valuable, and the ones who wait tend to have the change made for them.
Where the work usually starts.
These are the most important tasks a language model can already handle directly. In a typical engagement the first wins come from building workflows around them, so they stop eating the team's time.
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Mail, fax, or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, and court officials.
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Prepare and distribute invoices to bill clients or pay account expenses.
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Prepare, proofread, or process legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions, or pretrial agreements.
These are the most important tasks AI can already handle when paired with the right tools and context. The first wins usually come from building workflows around them. That is the difference between a model that could do the job and one that actually does it inside your business.
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Organize and maintain law libraries, documents, and case files.
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Mail, fax, or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, and court officials.
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Prepare and distribute invoices to bill clients or pay account expenses.
Every role has three or four places like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days.
Every task in the role.
Every O*NET task for this occupation, split by what AI can do unaided and what still needs a person. Importance is O*NET's 1 to 5 rating of how central each task is.
Tasks via O*NET "Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants" (43-6012.00).
What AI can already do
5 of 14 tasks, unaided
Mail, fax, or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, and court officials.
Prepare and distribute invoices to bill clients or pay account expenses.
Prepare, proofread, or process legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions, or pretrial agreements.
Complete various forms, such as accident reports, trial and courtroom requests, and applications for clients.
Draft and type office memos.
What still needs a person
9 of 14 tasks
Organize and maintain law libraries, documents, and case files.
Make photocopies of correspondence, documents, and other printed matter.
Assist attorneys in collecting information such as employment, medical, and other records.
Receive and place telephone calls.
Schedule and make appointments.
Submit articles and information from searches to attorneys for review and approval for use.
Make travel arrangements for attorneys.
Attend legal meetings, such as client interviews, hearings, or depositions, and take notes.
Review legal publications and perform database searches to identify laws and court decisions relevant to pending cases.
Tasks via O*NET "Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants" (43-6012.00).
What AI can already do
14 of 14 tasks, with tools
Organize and maintain law libraries, documents, and case files.
Mail, fax, or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, and court officials.
Prepare and distribute invoices to bill clients or pay account expenses.
Prepare, proofread, or process legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions, or pretrial agreements.
Make photocopies of correspondence, documents, and other printed matter.
Assist attorneys in collecting information such as employment, medical, and other records.
Complete various forms, such as accident reports, trial and courtroom requests, and applications for clients.
Receive and place telephone calls.
Schedule and make appointments.
Submit articles and information from searches to attorneys for review and approval for use.
Make travel arrangements for attorneys.
Draft and type office memos.
Attend legal meetings, such as client interviews, hearings, or depositions, and take notes.
Review legal publications and perform database searches to identify laws and court decisions relevant to pending cases.
What still needs a person
0 of 14 tasks
When AI is paired with workflow tools, every task in this role is reachable. That doesn't mean the role disappears, it means almost all the routine surface area can be compressed.
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Related occupations.
Other roles in Administrative and secretarial occupations, and roles close by exposure.
What it means for your sector.
This role's score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 task labels, weighted by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 through ISCO-08 (the ONS coding index) and US SOC 2010 (the BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional, which covers employees only.
Back to the mapMethodologySources (PDF)Built 29 April 2026
Pictures
- "Census pantograph and 1930s keypunches" by U.S. Census Bureau employees, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- "Shepard Barclay, St. Louis lawyer, in his office" by Missouri Historical Society via DPLA, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
- "Accountant's Office LCCN2016824374" by National Photo Company Collection, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- "Employment service in Oulu in the spring 1931" by Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons