Less than 3 years ago Goldman Sachs said 44% of legal work could be automated by AI.

A lot of people were skeptical.

McKinsey just confirmed it. And then some.

Their new report puts lawyers squarely in the "Agent-Centric" category.

That's the box highlighted in red in this chart.

70% of legal work hours are technically automatable today.

But look closer at the gray box inside.

That represents work requiring social and emotional capabilities.

Human in the loop work. About 25%.

70% minus 25% equals 45% which is REALLY close to Goldman's estimate.

That's the share of legal work that appears fully automatable right now.

As the tech gets better these ratios will change.

Goldman Sachs wasn't wrong. They may have been conservative.

But here's the thing.

In the mid-2010s AI was supposed to eliminate radiologists.

Between 2017 and 2024 employment in that role grew by 3%.

The jobs didn't disappear. They evolved.

The question isn't whether legal work will be automated.

It's whether you'll be designing the new workflows or getting displaced by them.