Prepare legal documents
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
This is the most automatable shape of work there is, and also the shape that most needs a live connection to the system the record lives in. Without that connection an agent can prepare the entry but cannot file it.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Recording, documentation and administration |
| Jobs that do it | 9 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Documenting/Recording Information (4.A.3.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 9 occupations that perform it.
- Prepare, draft, and review legal documents, such as wills, deeds, patent applications, mortgages, leases, and contracts.
- Draft or proofread judicial opinions, decisions, or citations.
- Issue subpoenas and administer oaths in preparation for formal hearings.
- Prepare settlement agreements for disputants to sign.
- Prepare affidavits or other documents, such as legal correspondence, and organize and maintain documents in paper or electronic filing system.
- Prepare lists of all legal instruments applying to a specific piece of land and the buildings on it.
- Type court orders for judges.
- Prepare and issue orders of the court, such as probation orders, release documentation, sentencing information, or summonses.
- Prepare, proofread, or process legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions, or pretrial agreements.
- Prepare legal briefs and opinions, and file appeals in state and federal courts of appeal.
- Prepare briefs, legal memoranda, or statements of issues involved in cases, including appropriate suggestions or recommendations.
- Issue subpoenas or administer oaths to prepare for formal hearings.
- Prepare, edit, or review legal documents, including legislation, briefs, pleadings, appeals, wills, contracts, and real estate closing statements.
- Copy or summarize recorded documents, such as mortgages, trust deeds, and contracts, that affect property titles.
- Prepare ordinances, resolutions, or proclamations so that they can be executed, recorded, archived, or distributed.
- Maintain judges' law libraries by assembling or updating appropriate documents.
- Prepare reports describing any title encumbrances encountered during searching activities and outlining actions needed to clear titles.
- Prepare documents recording the outcomes of court proceedings.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for recording, documentation and administration, and what it costs.
The work is not writing the record, it is filing it where the record lives. Make reaches most of those systems from $9 a month, which is the cheapest honest start; Composio is for when you are writing the agent yourself.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
9 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers
- Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators
- Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners
- Court, Municipal, and License Clerks
- Judicial Law Clerks
- Lawyers
- Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
- Paralegals and Legal Assistants
- Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Prepare legal or regulatory documents”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.