Dictation typing
Typing dictation for barristers,
without the queue.
For decades, getting dictation typed meant a typing service or a late night at the keyboard. clerk& is the third option: dictate on your phone, and a finished document — fee note, attendance note, letter or opinion — comes back in moments, in your house style, for the clerk to review and send.
The options
Three ways to get a dictation typed
Every barrister solves this one of three ways. The difference is who does the typing — and how long you wait for it.
A typing service
TranScribe, My Secretary, Type Assist and others
- You send audio; a human typist sends back the document
- Pay per audio minute, plus VAT
- Work is done by a team, during office hours
- Formatting judgment from experienced legal typists
Typing it yourself
Or a legal secretary, when you have one
- The evening disappears into the fee notes
- The attendance note gets written on Friday, from memory
- No marginal cost — except the hours
- The backlog is the real price
An AI clerk
clerk& — speech-to-document
- Dictate on your phone walking out of court
- A finished, filed document back in moments
- One flat plan; no per-minute meter running
- Counsel or clerk reviews — nothing sent without sign-off
Side by side
clerk& and a typing service, compared
Typing services have served the Irish legal profession well for years — TranScribe, for one, since 2008. The comparison isn't about quality of people; it's about what the model can and can't do. Service figures are published rates as of July 2026.
Who does the typing
- clerk&
- Automated — no human outside your practice hears the audio
- A typing service
- A team of human legal typists
What comes back
- clerk&
- A finished fee note, attendance note, letter or opinion — in your house style, filed to the matter
- A typing service
- A typed document in the requested format
When it comes back
- clerk&
- Moments after you stop dictating, any hour, any day
- A typing service
- When it reaches the front of the queue; office hours are typically Mon–Fri
What it costs
- clerk&
- €69/user/month flat, with 10 hours of dictation included
- A typing service
- Published rates around €2.20–€2.40 per audio minute + VAT — an hour of dictation is roughly €132–€144 + VAT
Where the audio goes
- clerk&
- Processed and stored in the EU only; never used to train models; Article 28 DPA available
- A typing service
- To the service's typists — reputable Irish services operate under confidentiality terms and GDPR
Typing-service pricing shown is TranScribe's published rate card (transcribe.ie, July 2026): €2.20/min regular, €2.35/min app, €2.40/min case-management dictation, all plus VAT. Turnaround varies by service and workload; most services do not publish a guaranteed turnaround time.
The honest trade-off
What a typing service does well — and what no typist can do
A good legal typist brings real judgment: the formatting conventions, the spelling of the firms instructing you, an ear for what counsel meant. Some services guarantee a minimum accuracy rate, and pay-as-you-go suits a practice that dictates rarely. None of that is the weakness.
The weakness is structural. A human team works a queue, during office hours, at a per-minute price — so the fee note dictated on Friday evening is typed when the queue allows, and an hour of dictation costs more than a month of clerk&. And every dictation is heard by someone outside your practice.
clerk& keeps what mattered about the typist — the finished, properly formatted document, reviewed before it leaves — and removes the queue, the meter, and the third party. Counsel dictates; the draft lands in moments, in your house style; the clerk reviews and dispatches.
Read on
Choosing how the typing gets done
Questions
Common questions
What does a typing service for barristers cost in Ireland?
Published rates run around €2.20–€2.40 per audio minute plus VAT (TranScribe's published pricing, July 2026), so an hour of dictation costs roughly €132–€144 plus VAT, every time. clerk& is one flat per-user plan with ten hours of dictation included each month.
How long does dictation typing take to come back?
A human typing service works a queue during office hours, and few services publish a guaranteed turnaround — same-day is usually a premium tier where it exists at all. clerk& returns a finished draft in moments, whether you dictate at 4pm on a Tuesday or 11pm on a Sunday.
Is it confidential to send privileged dictation to a typing service?
Reputable Irish typing services operate under confidentiality terms and GDPR, and many have served the legal profession for years. The structural difference is that with a typing service, a person outside your practice hears every dictation. With clerk&, processing is automated and EU-only, your content never trains any model, and a signed Article 28 data-processing agreement is available.
A human typist applies judgment. Doesn't an AI lose that?
An experienced legal typist's judgment is real, and a good service guarantees its accuracy. clerk& answers the same need differently: it drafts in your own house style — your headings, your fee-note layout, your references — and the draft goes to counsel or the clerk for review before anything is sent. The judgment stays inside your practice; the typing doesn't.
Can clerk& replace our typist or typing service?
For the dictation-to-document pipeline — fee notes, attendance notes, letters, opinions — yes, that is exactly what it does, and the clerk keeps the review-and-dispatch role. If you dictate only a few minutes a year, a pay-per-minute service may still suit; the 14-day free trial is the fair test — run a real week of work through it.
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.