Will AI Replace Paralegals?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that "employment of paralegals and legal assistants is projected to show little or no change from 2025 to 2035."

The projection runs from 404,900 jobs in 2025 to 403,800 in 2035 — a change of -1,100 jobs, which BLS labels 0%.

What AI changes, in BLS's own wording, is the growth outlook rather than the job itself: demand for paralegals is expected to be limited by advances in technology, including artificial intelligence, which may make paralegals more efficient at research and document preparation and reduce demand.

That is an efficiency sentence.

It is not a prediction that the occupation disappears — the same agency projects the occupation flat over the same decade.

The replacement the data does show is ordinary attrition.

BLS projects about 40,800 openings a year on average over 2025–35, mostly to replace workers who change occupations or leave the labor force — and firms are posting for them now; the paralegal jobs on our board show it in real time.

The occupation next door shows the decline BLS does project, with technology in the reasoning: employment of legal secretaries and administrative assistants is projected to fall from 157,600 in 2025 to 149,300 in 2035 (-5%, -8,300 jobs).

For secretaries, BLS cites technology — including AI systems and digital tools that let staff in many organizations prepare their own documents without secretarial help — as a reason employment is projected to decline.

Document self-preparation is the reason BLS names there.

The paralegal projection sits at 0%.

Two sources define the territory.

BLS names research and document preparation as the areas where AI may make paralegals more efficient.

And ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024), the ethics guidance on generative AI that the American Bar Association addressed to lawyers, lists the legal tasks generative AI may help with: legal research, contract review, due diligence, document review, regulatory compliance and drafting.

The tool-level picture — what these products actually do — is on our AI in law firms overview.

Lay those lists over the duties BLS assigns to paralegals and the overlap is specific: researching laws and regulations, gathering and organizing documents, and drafting correspondence and documents such as contracts.

Those are the text-heavy duties — researching, organizing, drafting — and they are where the tools the ABA describes are aimed.

Document review shows up in the record by name: Formal Opinion 512 names technology-assisted review in e-discovery as a well-known AI use, sorting documents as responsive or non-responsive and separating privileged ones.

"Already handles" deserves one caution.

What these sources document is direction and governance: BLS describes efficiency pressure, and the ABA opinion describes how lawyers must run the tools.

Start with the duties that do not reduce to generating text.

BLS's duty list for the occupation also includes investigating case facts, obtaining affidavits, helping at trial with exhibits and notes, filing documents with courts and agencies, and scheduling interviews, meetings and depositions.

Courthouses, witnesses and paper evidence are not downloadable.

The role itself is defined by human accountability.

The ABA's 2020 definition of paralegal describes a person who performs "specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible" — and under NALA's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Canon 3, a paralegal may perform any task properly delegated and supervised by an attorney, as long as the attorney stays responsible to the client, keeps a direct relationship with the client and takes professional responsibility for the work product.

A tool can draft the work.

It cannot be delegated to, supervised, or stand behind it.

Verification is the other human half.

Formal Opinion 512 warns that some generative AI tools hallucinate — producing plausible but baseless output — so uncritical reliance can mislead clients and courts.

The opinion ties GAI use to lawyers' duty of competence, and under NALA's Canon 3, checking that output against the record is among the tasks a paralegal may perform when an attorney properly delegates and supervises the work.

Firm size changes the mix, not the conclusion.

BLS notes that in small firms paralegals may work on all aspects of a case, while in larger firms they may work on one phase, such as preparing witnesses for deposition or trial.

Witness preparation is about as far from text generation as the duty list gets.

The risk BLS names is efficiency, which reframes the career question: the competition is not AI — it is the paralegal who runs AI well.

Everything learnable here sits in the two areas BLS names: research and document work.

Start with the AI layer.

Free, self-paced training aimed at attorneys and legal staff already exists — Clio's Legal AI Fundamentals Certification covers AI basics, prompting, AI security risks and choosing AI tools.

It is one vendor's free course, not an industry standard; the value is the syllabus, which reads like a short description of the skill set.

Then the platforms.

Clio Academy offers two self-paced certifications (Clio Certified Administrator and Clio Work Certified Expert — the Administrator credential's Credly badge is restricted to Clio customers, partners and Academic Access Program members), and Filevine University certifies users of its platform with role-based levels of expertise.

Those are examples of the certification pattern, not a ranking — the legal software skills guide covers the platform side in depth.

Keep building the documented core.

BLS lists communication, detail orientation, interpersonal, organizational and research skills as the important qualities for the occupation.

And the credential path still applies: BLS says certification is not required for paralegals, but some employers prefer or require it, and certification typically requires passing an exam and ongoing continuing education.

A vendor course is not certification — present each for what it is.

The hiring data supports the patient version of this career.

BLS projects about 40,800 openings a year on average through 2035, mostly to replace workers who change occupations or leave the labor force — openings that keep coming while the profile behind them shifts.

When you read postings, compare the requirements yourself — that is where a change in what firms expect would show first.

First, the honest limit: our research found no verified survey of how many law firms use AI or what they tell their staff about it.

What the record does document is where the jobs sit — 75% of paralegal and legal assistant jobs were in legal services in 2025 — so firm behavior, not tech headlines, is the demand question for this career.

The other documented piece is what the ABA's ethics guidance says firms' lawyers must do — an obligation, not a survey of what firms actually do.

Formal Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024) addresses lawyers' use of generative AI and ties it to existing duties: competence, confidentiality, client communication, supervision, meritorious claims, candor to the tribunal and reasonable fees.

It says managerial lawyers must set clear firm policies on permissible generative-AI use, that supervisors must make reasonable efforts to ensure lawyers and nonlawyers comply, and that supervision includes training subordinate lawyers and nonlawyers on the ethical and practical use of relevant generative AI tools and their risks.

Read as an employment signal, that is governance rather than headcount.

What the opinion asks of firms is policies, compliance and staff training — duties about how lawyers and staff use the tools, not a statement about how many staff a firm needs.

Separately, BLS keeps paralegals at 0% change while projecting a 5% decline for legal secretaries, within a secretaries outlook for which BLS cites technology, including AI and digital tools that let staff prepare their own documents, as a reason.

To read one specific firm, the interview is the instrument.

Asking how the firm handles AI in its research and document workflows is a fair candidate question — the ethics guidance expects the firm to have policies and training to describe.