AI is now visibly reshaping legal work, but the data points to task disruption and role redesign rather than an overnight collapse in law jobs.
AI is rapidly changing the job scene everywhere, but what do the latest surveys and reports show about law jobs’ outlook?
Law jobs: automation vs demand
- Recent McKinsey-linked analyses suggest roughly 20–25% of current legal work is technically automatable with today’s tools, with higher exposure for junior and support roles focused on research, review and drafting.
- Thomson Reuters’ 2025 Future of Professionals data shows lawyers using generative AI expect to free up around 240 hours a year and unlock about US$19,000 in value per professional, but not wholesale headcount cuts.
- Deloitte warns firms to prepare for a “50% shock” to entry-level white‑collar tasks by 2030, pushing law firms to retrain, redesign workflows and, in some cases, “replace those who resist the changes.”
Jobs overall: exposed, not erased
- A November 2025 MIT “Iceberg Index” study finds existing AI could technically replace tasks equivalent to 11.7% of the US workforce’s wages, especially in routine professional and administrative work, but stresses this is exposure, not a forecast of equivalent job loss.
- A December 2025 ITIF review concludes AI created about 120,000 direct US jobs in 2024 versus roughly 12,700 AI‑linked layoffs, arguing that, so far, AI is reshaping work faster than it is destroying net employment.
- PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer similarly frames AI‑intensive roles as attracting faster wage and productivity growth, with workers becoming more, not less, valuable when complemented by AI.
