AI Resilience Report forCourt, Municipal, and License Clerks

If you're worried about AI taking over jobs in court and city offices, here's some honest but hopeful news: AI is already entering this field, but mostly as a helper rather than a replacement. Roosevelt Institute researchers note that public administration workers are the contact point between constituents and government — they're the ones who issue marriage licenses and hunting permits, and who handle interactions at courts and the DMV. AI technologies are already changing these workers' jobs, and therefore how constituents experience critical government operations.

For court clerks specifically, AI is being used to assist with the heaviest paperwork. In Los Angeles County, judges in one of the nation's largest court systems started using AI in 2026 to rapidly distill hundreds of pages of legal motions and help draft tentative rulings, with officials saying judges are required to review and edit the draft before adopting tentative rulings. Common uses already in practice include organizing and searching large volumes of filings, creating preliminary real-time transcriptions, summarizing motions, and supporting scheduling and calendar management ^[1] — which maps directly onto the docket preparation and filing tasks that clerks do.

On the municipal/license side, permitting platforms and ERP systems are adding AI features that automate repetitive tasks, flag anomalies, and provide predictive insights ^[2], and tools like Microsoft Copilot are now being used by clerks to draft documents, summarize reports, and answer routine inquiries. Importantly, the National Center for State Courts (which hosts COSCA) frames AI as one tool among many — like all tools, it is important to be careful how you use it, and explicitly tells court clerks, law librarians, and self-help staff ^[3] to guide the public through AI's limits rather than rely on it blindly.

Adoption is happening — but more slowly and carefully here than in many private-sector jobs. On the "speed up" side, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects overall employment of information clerks to decline 3 percent from 2024 to 2034 ^[4], and tight government budgets push leaders toward tools that can summarize documents or draft notices cheaply. A September 2024 Ernst and Young survey found that more than 50 percent of senior federal, state, and local government workers were regularly using AI applications ^[5] — a huge jump from just 2 percent of cities the year before.

On the "slow down" side, courts and clerks' offices handle legally binding records where mistakes have real consequences. Roosevelt researchers warn that failures in AI systems, such as wrongful benefit denials, aren't just inconveniences but can be life-and-death situations for people who rely upon government programs. The good news for young people considering this career: the human-facing tasks — explaining rules to confused applicants, exercising judgment, and helping people navigate stressful legal situations — are exactly what AI struggles with.

Thomson Reuters notes that keeping the human element central is a core question for court clerks adopting AI ^[6], and rule-makers like NCSC are publishing guidance on policy, ethics, and disclosure before widespread deployment. That regulatory carefulness, plus public trust concerns, means clerks who learn to work alongside AI will likely remain very employable even as routine tasks shrink.