Administrative assistants spend their days checking what others drafted, deciding what goes to whom and catching errors before they leave the building. That is most of what reviewing a governed AI agent involves. In a professional services firm, the agent drafts letters, books meetings and files documents; the assistant who used to do those things is well placed to judge whether the agent did them right.
What does an agent take on in an assistant's world?
Picture the work of an assistant supporting a team of consultants. Diary management, travel bookings, meeting notes, client letters, expense claims, document filing, chasing signatures. A governed agent can draft most of this. It can propose meeting times from diaries, draft a letter from a template, file a signed document to the right client folder and prepare an expense claim from receipts.
In a professional firm, anything that reaches a client usually stays at depth 2: the agent drafts and a person sends. Bookings that cost money may only be drafted above a limit. Actions outside the agent's role, such as sharing a client folder with an outside party, are refused. The assistant who sits beside the agent becomes its reviewer.
Which of your skills already fit?
You check what others draft. Assistants catch the misspelt client name, the wrong date, the attachment that was mentioned but not attached. Agent drafts fail in exactly these ways, especially when the source they read was out of date.
You know who decides what. An experienced assistant knows which partner signs off fee letters, which client must never be copied in, and when a request needs a manager. That is escalation knowledge, and it is central to review.
You gatekeep. Assistants say no to meeting requests that should not go ahead and to callers who should not get through. Refusing an agent's draft when it is wrong is the same instinct.
You keep records straight. Filing, version control and knowing which document is the signed one translate directly into judging an agent's sources. A signed engagement letter from the client is stronger than a draft forwarded by email.
What does it look like in practice?
Take an assistant we will call Petra in a twenty-person management consultancy. The agent drafts a dozen client emails a day for the team. Petra reviews them before they go. Most are fine. One confirms a workshop date that the client moved by phone, so the diary is out of date. Another quotes a fee from an old proposal template. A third is addressed to a client contact who has since left the company, according to a note only Petra had seen.
She corrects all three, records why, and updates the contact list and template the agent reads. Next week, the agent's drafts are cleaner. Her review did more than fix three emails; it fixed the sources.
What do you need to add?
Assistant work is strong preparation, but agent review asks for a few new habits.
- Reasons on the record. Every decision you make on an agent's draft is filed with your name. You need to write a short reason that someone else can follow.
- Source judgement in words. You already sense which documents to trust. Learn to say why: sealed records from the firm's own systems, signed documents from known parties, declared statements from clients, and external material such as emails and web pages.
- Confidence to correct senior people's agents. In some firms, the agent drafts on behalf of a partner. You may need to stop a draft that a senior colleague's agent produced. That takes confidence and tact.
- Data protection awareness. Client information is often personal data. Under GDPR or UK GDPR, the firm must handle it lawfully and accurately. Reviewers need to spot when an agent's draft shares more than it should.
Pryme Intelligence Academy's free Foundations course covers the vocabulary and the decision chain in about four hours, and can be listened to as audio around a working day.
How do assistants compare with similar roles?
Virtual assistants share most of these strengths and often work across several clients' systems at once; see why virtual assistants make strong AI agent reviewers. Operations coordinators bring a process view, which suits agent ownership later; see why operations coordinators make strong AI agent reviewers. Assistants stand out for their knowledge of people: who expects what, who must not be copied in, and which client relationships need care.
What is the trade-off?
Assistant roles often involve a personal working relationship with one manager or team. Review roles can be more detached, working a queue for several teams. Some assistants miss the relationship.
There is also visibility. Assistants are used to working behind the scenes. In agent review, your decisions are recorded and may be sampled. That can feel exposing, though it also makes your judgement visible in a way it rarely was before.
How do you take the next step?
Start by offering to review the agent's drafts for your team, and keep a short log of what you corrected and why. When you interview, use those examples; our page of interview answers about AI agents for administrative assistants gives you model answers to adapt. If you are in Ireland or the Netherlands, local conventions differ; see AI operations careers for administrative assistants in Ireland. The AI agent jobs and careers guide maps where review can lead.
Questions people ask
Will agents replace administrative assistants?
Agents take over much of the drafting, booking and filing. Checking that work, knowing the people and handling the exceptions still need a person. The role changes rather than disappears, though nobody can promise every post will remain.
Do I need technical skills?
Not beyond confidence with the firm's systems. Review is about judgement and accuracy, which assistants already practise daily.
What title should I look for?
Titles vary a lot. Look for duties such as reviewing drafts, quality checks, exceptions and escalation, whether the advert says assistant, coordinator or operations.