How modern law firms can use AI transcription without compromising client data
John Yardley, founder and CEO at Threads, highlights the use cases, benefits and risks of AI-enabled call transcription, offering guardrails for using AI transcription tools securely
Law firms are increasingly turning to AI-powered call transcription to improve efficiency, accuracy and collaboration. Used well, these tools can transform how client conversations are documented and shared: used poorly, they introduce serious data protection and confidentiality risks. We explore why AI transcription is gaining traction in legal practice and how firms can adopt it safely, compliantly and pragmatically.
The case for recording and transcribing client calls
Most law firms require solicitors to take notes during client calls. This is essential for not only avoiding disputes over what was discussed, but also because it is unrealistic to recall every detail that may later become relevant. Written notes also provide a summary that can be shared with colleagues, supporting continuity and collaboration.
In practice, however, note-taking often detracts from the quality of the conversation. Dividing attention between listening, speaking and writing frequently results in notes that are incomplete, inaccurate or difficult to interpret.
Recording calls and writing notes afterwards can partially address this issue, but it significantly increases the time spent on each client interaction.
AI has now reached a point where it can overcome these challenges more accurately and at a far lower cost than manual approaches. Modern AI does not simply convert speech into text — it applies contextual understanding to conversations and can produce accurate transcripts and summaries within minutes of a call ending. As a result, forward-thinking law firms are adopting AI call transcription to create faster and more reliable attendance notes, reduce administrative overhead, improve visibility of client communications across teams, and ensure consistent documentation for risk management.
For transcription to be genuinely useful, it must also be easy to find and share. Storing recordings or transcripts on individual devices quickly becomes impractical and inaccessible to colleagues. By processing calls centrally and storing transcripts securely in the cloud, firms gain resilience, searchability and controlled access.
Security and data privacy: the challenges of call recording
Once a transcription is stored anywhere other than on an employee’s personal device, issues of privacy and security must be addressed — including who can view the transcription, and whether it can be lost, deleted, altered or accessed by unauthorised parties.
An employee may want to prevent colleagues from seeing personal or irrelevant communications. At the same time, they will want assurance that professional messages can be recovered from any device at any time in the future, which is a security requirement. Balancing both needs is complex.
These challenges are heightened by the nature of legal work. Client calls frequently contain sensitive or confidential information. Insecure storage of voice data or transcripts increases exposure, while some AI providers lack transparency around how data is handled. In particular, the risk of call data being used to train AI models without explicit consent raises serious ethical and regulatory concerns. All of this sits alongside strict regulatory expectations around confidentiality, consent and data protection.
What ‘secure AI transcription’ should actually mean
When evaluating AI call transcription, law firms must look beyond accuracy and efficiency and carefully assess security and governance. Client calls often contain highly sensitive information, and any data breach could expose firms to legal, regulatory and reputational harm. In some cases, it may also be necessary to restrict which calls can be recorded or transcribed.
At a minimum, call data should be encrypted when stored on remote servers and protected by strong access controls, including robust password policies and two-factor authentication. Clear data retention and deletion policies are equally important. Users should understand which calls can be stored, how long transcripts are retained, and how they can be permanently deleted when no longer required.
Firms should also scrutinise the policies of their transcription provider. This includes where data is physically stored, who can access it, and under what circumstances. For many firms, UK or EU data residency is a compliance requirement rather than a preference.
Threads is designed with these requirements in mind. We never use customer call data for model training, and we allow subscribers to configure consent, retention and deletion settings — ensuring firms retain full control.
Turning AI transcription into a secure advantage
For most law firms, transcribing client calls delivers clear efficiency gains by creating an accurate, machine-readable record of conversations. Once call data exists as text, it becomes searchable and retrievable in the same way as email or other digital communications.
However, transcription alone is not enough. Without a robust, scalable and secure system to organise and govern those transcripts, they quickly become as risky and ineffective as uncatalogued emails. Cloud-based message databases bring enormous benefits, but they also introduce the possibility of unauthorised access by people or systems.
Mitigating that risk requires understanding where it arises and choosing tools designed for the realities of legal practice. With the right approach, AI transcription can enhance efficiency and client service without compromising confidentiality — If you have questions about call transcription security at your firm, we’d be happy to talk.
