The AI note-taker that joins a video call and produces a tidy summary is one of the most useful tools around, and one of the most quietly risky for a law firm. It records a confidential conversation and sends it to a provider to process.
What actually happens
Many of these tools capture the audio, transcribe it on the provider's servers, and store the transcript and summary. For a client meeting, that is a disclosure of confidential and often privileged material to a third party, frequently outside the firm and sometimes outside the country.
The questions to ask first
Where is the recording processed and stored, is it used to train the provider's models, who can access it, and is there a data processing agreement that meets the UK GDPR? A consumer note-taker bolted onto a personal account answers none of these well.
A safe way to use them
Choose a business tool that keeps data inside your environment, tell participants they are being recorded and get their agreement, and keep client conversations out of any tool the firm has not cleared. The convenience is real once the controls are in place.
The note-taker is worth having, provided the firm decides which one and on what terms, rather than each fee earner choosing their own.
The ICO's guidance on AI and data protection is the reference point for any tool that records and processes personal information.
If a note-taker has already sat in on your client calls, the question is what it kept and where it went. We answer that with firms in an afternoon: start with a conversation.