Court Reporter vs Lawyer: which is more exposed to AI?
34 points apart. These are not comparable risk profiles.
Court Reporter sits at 82% time-weighted AI exposure against 48% for Lawyer, a 34-point gap driven by the 56% of court reporter work time that current models can already substitute outright. Lawyer holds a larger human-critical core — 37% of the role's time sits in work like "courtroom advocacy" that models score poorly on. Both roles sit inside Legal, so the exposure difference reflects task design rather than a change of field.
Seven dimensions, side by side.
What actually creates the gap.
Court Reporters spend 56% of their time-weighted week on tasks a current model can produce end-to-end, against 40% for Lawyers. The single largest contributor is "transcribe proceedings verbatim", graded at 90% and worth 22% of the role's time. That one task accounts for more of the gap than any difference in seniority, tooling, or industry.
- Transcribe proceedings verbatim90% · 22% time
- Format and proof transcripts86% · 12% time
- Produce certified transcripts82% · 14% time
- Caption hearings in realtime78% · 8% time
- Maintain courtroom decorum role20% · 3% time
- Safeguard record integrity22% · 3% time
- Certify accuracy under oath25% · 6% time
- Legal research and case law analysis78% · 18% time
- Draft standard contracts74% · 12% time
- Document review and due diligence72% · 10% time
- Courtroom advocacy8% · 14% time
- Judicial and regulatory judgment11% · 3% time
- Client relationship and strategy12% · 12% time
Both roles lean on procedural — that is the part of your experience that travels intact. The real divide is judgement: Lawyers score 88 there against 40 for Court Reporters, a 48-point spread. That is the gap you would actually have to close.
| DIMENSION | COURT REPORTER | LAWYER |
|---|---|---|
| Judgement | 40 | 88 |
| Social | 30 | 72 |
| Manual | 42 | 3 |
Neither role lists the other as a mapped adjacent career, and the capability profiles sit 38 points apart on average. Treat a move between them as a genuine career change with a retraining cost, not as a hedge against AI exposure.
Score your own exposure in 8 questions →Common questions.
Is Court Reporter or Lawyer more at risk from AI?
Court Reporter. It scores 82% time-weighted AI exposure against 48% for Lawyer — a 34-point gap. 56% of court reporter work time is already fully substitutable by current models, versus 40% for Lawyers.
Which pays more, Court Reporter or Lawyer?
Lawyer, by roughly $82k at the median ($145k versus $63k). Note that the higher-paying role here is also the less AI-exposed one, which matters if you are weighing pay against durability.
Can a court reporter switch to being a lawyer?
Neither role lists the other as a mapped adjacent career, and the capability profiles sit 38 points apart on average. Treat a move between them as a genuine career change with a retraining cost, not as a hedge against AI exposure.
Which role is growing faster, Court Reporter or Lawyer?
Lawyer, at 8% projected ten-year growth versus -5% — a 13-point difference. Growth and AI exposure are separate signals: a role can grow in headcount while the content of the work is substantially rewritten.