Job Check
Lawyers
Represent clients in criminal and civil litigation and other legal proceedings, draw up legal documents, or manage or advise clients on legal transactions. May specialize in a single area or may practice broadly in many areas of law.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Interpret laws, rulings and regulations for individuals and businesses.People already use AI for this at work
- 02Analyze the probable outcomes of cases, using knowledge of legal precedents.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 03Gather evidence to formulate defense or to initiate legal actions by such means as interviewing clients and witnesses to ascertain the facts of a case.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 04Represent clients in court or before government agencies.Mostly human for now
- 05Evaluate findings and develop strategies and arguments in preparation for presentation of cases.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 06Advise clients concerning business transactions, claim liability, advisability of prosecuting or defending lawsuits, or legal rights and obligations.People already use AI for this at work
- 07Examine legal data to determine advisability of defending or prosecuting lawsuit.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Prepare, draft, and review legal documents, such as wills, deeds, patent applications, mortgages, leases, and contracts.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Study Constitution, statutes, decisions, regulations, and ordinances of quasi-judicial bodies to determine ramifications for cases.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 10Negotiate settlements of civil disputes.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job loss17%of this job’s work time goes to tasks that people already do with Claude at work, counting tasks where AI only helps as half (2026).Anthropic, 2026
43%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 62% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Represent clients in court or before government agencies.