Legal dictation software
Dictation that ends with a
finished document.
Most legal dictation turns your voice into text and stops there. clerk& takes the dictation a barrister or solicitor gives between hearings and returns a finished, filed document — fee note, attendance note, letter or opinion — in your house style, with EU-only data.
The shift
Speech-to-text was the last generation. Speech-to-document is this one.
For twenty years, legal dictation meant one thing: speech-to-text. You spoke, a tool transcribed, and you — or a typist — turned the transcript into a fee note, an attendance note or a letter. The recognition got better; the work after it never went away.
clerk& is the shift to speech-to-document. It takes the same thirty-second voice memo a barrister gives walking out of court and returns the finished document — structured, in your house style, filed to the right matter — for the clerk to review and send.
The difference
Transcription gives you text. We give you the document.
Speech-to-text tools
Dragon, digital dictaphones, generic voice typing
- Hand you a block of transcribed text
- Guess at unfamiliar citations and surnames
- Leave the formatting, headings and references to you
- Produce a file you then name, save and route by hand
clerk& — speech-to-document
Built for the Irish bar
- Returns a finished fee note, attendance note, letter or opinion
- Recognises Irish citations, neutral citations and legal Latin
- Applies your house style; calculates hours and VAT
- Files it to the right matter, ready for the clerk to review and send
The typing question
Software is one answer. Someone still has to do the typing.
Most Irish practices get their legal dictation typed one of four ways: an in-house legal secretary, an outsourced legal typing service charging by the audio minute, speech-to-text software that hands the formatting back to you, or an AI clerk that returns the finished document. Only the last two are “software”, and only one of them ends with a document.
That is the real choice behind the search for legal dictation software — and the honest comparison, including what an Irish typing bureau publishes as its per-minute rate, deserves its own page.
A buyer's guide
What to look for when choosing legal dictation software
Five questions that separate a transcription tool from one that actually closes the fees book.
Output: a document, not a transcript
The question that matters most. Ask to see the actual output. Is it a structured fee note or attendance note — or a block of words you still have to turn into one? The transcript was never the deliverable.
Your house style, not a vendor template
Good legal dictation should produce work that looks like it came from your own desk: your headings, your fee-note layout, your reference conventions — not a generic template you edit back into shape every time.
It knows Irish practice
Citations, neutral citations, legal Latin and the firms instructing you should come back right the first time. A model trained on everything and specialising in nothing will make the same three corrections you make every day.
Where your data lives
For privileged material this is not a footnote. Ask where audio and documents are processed and stored, whether anything crosses to the US, whether your content trains the vendor's models, and whether you can get a signed Article 28 DPA.
Who reviews before it goes out
Dictation should speed the draft, not remove the check. The clerk should review and dispatch; nothing should leave without counsel's sign-off.
EU-only by design
Privileged material should never leave the EU
Legal dictation means privileged material leaving your room. Where it goes is the whole question — and for most general-purpose tools, the answer is a US data centre.
clerk& runs on frontier AI models deployed in EU regions. Audio and documents are processed and stored in the EU only; nothing crosses to the United States; and your matter content is never used to train any model. An Article 28 data-processing agreement is available — so the CLOUD Act conversation that stalls most AI adoption in chambers simply doesn't arise.
Built for Irish practice
It recognises the law you actually work in
General-purpose dictation was trained on everything and specialises in nothing. clerk& was built for the Irish bar.
It recognises Irish neutral citations such as [2012] IESC 18, legal Latin like res judicata and the Henderson v Henderson principle, the Circuit, High and Supreme Courts, Irish-English spelling, and the solicitor firms instructing you — so the draft comes back right the first time, not riddled with the same corrections you make every day.
Read on
Choosing legal dictation software
Questions
Common questions
What is legal dictation typing?
Legal dictation typing is the step between a lawyer speaking and a finished document existing: someone — a legal secretary, an outsourced typing service, or software — turns the dictated audio into a correctly formatted fee note, attendance note, letter or opinion. Traditional dictation software only automates the transcription half, leaving the formatting, filing and house style to a person. clerk& automates the whole step and returns the document itself.
Can legal dictation software replace a typing service or a legal secretary?
For the dictation-to-document pipeline, yes — that is exactly what clerk& does, and without the per-minute meter or the office-hours queue a typing bureau runs on. What it does not replace is review: the draft goes to counsel, the solicitor or the clerk before anything is sent. We compare the routes in full, with published prices, on our legal typing and dictation page.
Do I need Dragon or a separate speech-recognition engine?
No. clerk& does the speech recognition itself and then drafts the document, so there is nothing else to licence or install. Dragon is excellent at raw transcription; the difference is that it stops at text, while clerk& returns a finished, formatted document.
How is this different from BigHand?
BigHand is the long-standing incumbent in legal dictation and a capable workflow platform, built largely for larger firms with a back office to match. clerk& is built for a barrister and a single clerk, or a small chambers, and it produces the finished document itself rather than routing audio to a typing pool.
Does it understand Irish legal language?
Yes. It recognises Irish neutral citations such as [2012] IESC 18, legal Latin like res judicata, the Circuit, High and Supreme Courts, Irish-English spelling, and the solicitor firms instructing you.
Is cloud-based legal dictation GDPR-compliant?
It depends entirely on where the audio and documents go. With clerk&, everything is processed and stored in the EU, there is no transfer to the United States, your matter content is never used to train any model, and an Article 28 data-processing agreement is available.
Who reviews the document before it is sent?
You do. Counsel dictates, the draft lands in a shared workspace, and the clerk reviews and dispatches it. Nothing leaves without sign-off.
Put your AI clerk to work.
Free 14-day trial. No credit card. Five-minute setup. Whether you’re a sole practitioner or running a busy clerk’s room, clerk& earns its keep on the first fee note.
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