What a legal secretary costs in the US
The wage BLS measured across 156,280 jobs, what an employer pays on top of it, the pay in every state, and which of the job's core tasks already show up in AI use.
Medians for the whole US. Your own cost depends on where you hire, the benefits you offer and the hours worked.
- Median wage
- $55,570
- Hourly wage
- $26.72
- Loaded per hour
- $33.28
- Middle half earns
- $44,450 to $71,970
- Jobs in the US
- 156,280
Wage × 1.2455 for benefits and payroll taxes, from BLS.
A legal secretary in the US is paid a median $55,570 a year, $26.72 an hour, across 156,280 jobs. With benefits, a small employer pays about $69,210. Of its 10 core tasks, 3 showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026, and in 2 of those Claude mostly did the task rather than assisting.
The work, task by task
The 10 core tasks O*NET lists for legal secretaries and administrative assistants, most important first, and how each showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026. The bar splits those conversations between Claude doing the task and Claude helping a person do it.
- 01Organize and maintain law libraries, documents, and case files.
- 02Mail, fax, or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, and court officials.
- 03Prepare and distribute invoices to bill clients or pay account expenses.
- 04Prepare, proofread, or process legal documents, such as summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions, or pretrial agreements.Claude.ai: 44% did the task, 56% helped · API: 73% did the task
- 05Make photocopies of correspondence, documents, and other printed matter.
- 06Assist attorneys in collecting information such as employment, medical, and other records.
- 07Complete various forms, such as accident reports, trial and courtroom requests, and applications for clients.
- 08Receive and place telephone calls.API: 100% did the task, 0% helped
- 09Schedule and make appointments.Claude.ai: 80% did the task, 20% helped · API: 95% did the task
- 10Draft and type office memos.Claude.ai: 51% did the task, 49% helped
3 of 10 tasks appear in the Claude.ai sample of the Anthropic Economic Index for May 2026, and 1 more only in its sample of API traffic, where businesses run Claude inside their own software. A task without a row had too few conversations for Anthropic to publish, which is not the same as none. Shares are of all sampled Claude.ai conversations, so small figures are normal: 0.06% of every conversation that month was about this occupation.
Pay by state
The median annual wage in each state and DC, and the same wage fully loaded. District of Columbia pays the most, $99,280; Kansas the least, $36,620. BLS publishes no figure where its sample is too small, which leaves 1 gap here.
| State | Median wage | Fully loaded | Middle half | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $45,950 | $57,230 | $36,660 to $57,680 | 1,840 |
| Alaska | $61,280 | $76,320 | $50,530 to $62,190 | 660 |
| Arizona | $55,120 | $68,650 | $47,870 to $74,940 | 2,600 |
| Arkansas | $41,410 | $51,580 | $34,530 to $48,640 | 610 |
| California | $62,860 | $78,290 | $50,040 to $80,650 | 27,470 |
| Colorado | $59,490 | $74,090 | $49,340 to $82,390 | 2,030 |
| Connecticut | $66,220 | $82,480 | $56,150 to $81,050 | 1,090 |
| Delaware | $66,130 | $82,360 | $59,750 to $80,110 | 980 |
| District of Columbia | $99,280 | $123,650 | $64,670 to $107,690 | 1,940 |
| Florida | $48,510 | $60,420 | $40,960 to $64,800 | 10,920 |
| Georgia | $48,460 | $60,360 | $40,990 to $60,830 | 3,260 |
| Hawaii | $49,460 | $61,600 | $48,310 to $64,800 | 680 |
| Idaho | $41,880 | $52,160 | $38,990 to $46,010 | 420 |
| Illinois | $52,790 | $65,750 | $47,120 to $68,030 | 8,030 |
| Indiana | $47,740 | $59,460 | $42,880 to $61,540 | 2,670 |
| Iowa | $46,590 | $58,030 | $38,560 to $56,660 | 1,120 |
| Kansas | $36,620 | $45,610 | $30,520 to $45,140 | 1,600 |
| Kentucky | $39,300 | $48,950 | $35,410 to $47,510 | 2,810 |
| Louisiana | $48,050 | $59,850 | $37,730 to $61,030 | 2,460 |
| Maine | $48,040 | $59,830 | $44,240 to $58,960 | 860 |
| Maryland | $61,440 | $76,520 | $49,920 to $77,580 | 1,670 |
| Massachusetts | $62,120 | $77,370 | $48,040 to $77,420 | 4,020 |
| Michigan | $56,870 | $70,830 | $44,030 to $71,970 | 3,580 |
| Minnesota | $63,180 | $78,690 | $54,460 to $79,410 | 2,410 |
| Mississippi | $45,140 | $56,220 | $31,750 to $54,240 | 820 |
| Missouri | $38,560 | $48,030 | $36,270 to $53,720 | 3,310 |
| Montana | Not published | · | · | 730 |
| Nebraska | $45,800 | $57,040 | $34,840 to $56,750 | 1,310 |
| Nevada | $56,470 | $70,330 | $47,870 to $70,530 | 1,430 |
| New Hampshire | $51,830 | $64,550 | $44,980 to $69,260 | 300 |
| New Jersey | $63,080 | $78,570 | $48,910 to $76,100 | 4,160 |
| New Mexico | $57,800 | $71,990 | $48,210 to $65,760 | 1,400 |
| New York | $72,230 | $89,960 | $52,780 to $97,220 | 9,800 |
| North Carolina | $43,720 | $54,450 | $36,890 to $50,650 | 3,780 |
| North Dakota | $53,540 | $66,680 | $46,470 to $61,620 | 360 |
| Ohio | $51,080 | $63,620 | $41,230 to $62,130 | 4,360 |
| Oklahoma | $45,950 | $57,230 | $37,380 to $52,830 | 1,290 |
| Oregon | $59,610 | $74,240 | $45,270 to $82,730 | 1,590 |
| Pennsylvania | $51,430 | $64,060 | $45,730 to $60,320 | 6,230 |
| Rhode Island | $63,020 | $78,490 | $43,680 to $80,890 | 390 |
| South Carolina | $52,840 | $65,810 | $42,220 to $59,030 | 2,280 |
| South Dakota | $47,790 | $59,520 | $42,790 to $51,010 | 560 |
| Tennessee | $45,340 | $56,470 | $37,310 to $59,640 | 2,980 |
| Texas | $45,940 | $57,220 | $41,590 to $62,610 | 13,380 |
| Utah | $52,860 | $65,840 | $43,040 to $66,500 | 940 |
| Vermont | $49,090 | $61,140 | $46,580 to $55,210 | · |
| Virginia | $55,320 | $68,900 | $44,060 to $69,020 | 2,380 |
| Washington | $58,360 | $72,690 | $49,400 to $77,560 | 3,950 |
| West Virginia | $46,960 | $58,490 | $33,890 to $54,570 | 1,200 |
| Wisconsin | $55,410 | $69,010 | $48,270 to $61,920 | 1,210 |
| Wyoming | $46,960 | $58,490 | $46,770 to $50,960 | 280 |
The same benefits ratio applies in every state, because BLS does not publish benefit costs by business size for each state. The middle half is the 25th to 75th percentile wage.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is copied from a public file. The only arithmetic is the loaded cost: the wage times 1.2455.
- Wages
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation 43-6012 (Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants). Annual figures are the hourly wage times 2,080 hours, as BLS computes them, so they already include pay for paid leave.
- Fully loaded
- BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (2026 Q2), private businesses with 1 to 49 workers: $37.64 an hour in total compensation over $27.88 in wages plus $2.34 in paid leave gives 1.2455. Paid leave sits in the denominator because the annual wage already pays it.
- Tasks
- O*NET 31.0 core tasks for 43-6012.00, the ten most important by their importance rating. A few occupations list fewer core tasks.
- AI use
- Anthropic Economic Index, release of June 2026, conversations from May 2026. "Did the task" is Anthropic's automation share, where the user directs Claude to do the work; "helped" is augmentation, where the user works with Claude to learn, check or iterate.
- Not measured
- What a particular business pays, and whether an AI system can do a task well. The AI figures count conversations about a task, not jobs replaced.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. AI use data from the Anthropic Economic Index by Anthropic, under CC BY. Wage and benefit data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What would an AI system cost for this work?
Put $69,210 beside the running cost of a system doing the tasks above, with the build counted in year one.
BLS wages May 2025 · O*NET 31.0 · Anthropic Economic Index