A lot of people are making that same decision. In the secretarial/admin. assistant field, technology has made the live helper unnecessary for younger tech-savvy workers. I don’t know much about legal secretaries.
It’s true at law firms, at least around my area. My friend, who worked me at my last employer, was let go in January. It had been coming for some time. The employer no longer has secretaries assigned to 2 or 3 attorneys. It has what amounts to a steno pool or word processing department. The attorneys just don’t need that kind of dedicated attention anymore.
Fortunately, for my friend, she is very tech savvy. She managed to secure an IT job. I’m not that sophisticated. I can turn on a computer and type. That’s about it. :)