What is an AI paralegal?
An AI paralegal, sometimes called a digital paralegal, is autonomous software that does the repetitive work a litigation paralegal does: drafting sign up documents, requesting and chasing records, preparing discovery responses, and keeping every matter moving. The attorney supervises it the way the rules of professional conduct already require for nonlawyer staff: every draft comes back for review and approval before anything leaves the firm.
What does an AI paralegal actually do?
The work that buries human paralegals, on every active case at once:
- Drafts retainers, authorizations, and intake documents the moment a call ends
- Requests medical records on day one and chases providers for the life of the case
- Files, indexes, and summarizes records as they arrive
- Drafts letters of representation, preservation letters, and demand letters
- Prepares discovery responses from the case file the day a demand is received
- Brings every draft to the attorney for approval before it goes anywhere
Is an AI paralegal there to replace my paralegals?
No. It takes the work that burns them out: the chasing, the data entry, the reminder faxes. Paralegals become reviewers of finished work, attorneys get drafts instead of blank pages, and the firm stops losing good people to the grind. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects roughly 39,300 paralegal openings a year, most of them replacing people who leave the occupation;1 the grind is the reason, and removing the grind is the point.
How is it supervised?
Exactly the way the rules already require attorneys to supervise nonlawyer staff: the attorney remains responsible for the work product.2 A well built system makes that structural rather than optional: nothing is served, filed, or sent without an attorney approving it first. That is how Execute is built, and the supervision question is treated in full in Is AI allowed under the rules of professional conduct?
What should a firm look for in one?
- It works inside the software the firm already runs, with the firm’s case management system remaining the system of record
- It starts the work itself rather than waiting for prompts and uploads
- An attorney approval gate that is architecture, not a setting
- The firm’s work never trains another firm’s system
1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, paralegals and legal assistants: job outlook.
2. American Bar Association, Model Rule 5.3, responsibilities regarding nonlawyer assistance: rule text.
Related questions, answered the same way.
The work in this answer runs itself with Execute.
Pilot firms onboard in fall 2026. The waitlist sets the order.
Open to civil plaintiff and defense law firms.