The value of call recordings for enhancing compliance and building collective intelligence
As legal professionals strive to maintain rigorous records and manage cases efficiently, Dr John Yardley, founder and CEO at Threads, talks to LPM editor Andreea Dulgheru about how AI-powered call recordings and transcriptions can strengthen audit trails and improve accuracy and service delivery with minimal administrative work
Keeping a comprehensive and accurate record of all communications between a law firm and client is a must for any legal case, as reliable documentation can help lawyers meet client expectations from the outset, and be the difference between a won or lost case.
However, when it comes to building this compendium, the value of phone call recordings tends to be overlooked — a mistake that can create a blind spot for legal professionals, notes Dr John Yardley, founder of Threads.
According to him, this is mainly due to the low visibility and searchability of phone call information. Unlike emails, which are easily searchable and shareable with just a few clicks, extracting information from phone calls often requires significant manual work, which takes time, and thus money.
Yardley explains: “Without any technology (other than the phone), there are two ways to record information discussed in a call. One is to take notes at the time of the conversation, which often detracts from the quality of the conversation and results in incomplete or inaccurate records if they don’t remember to jot down everything. The other is to record and manually transcribe the call, which is very time consuming. In the end, both are very labour-intensive and not efficient.”
This is where AI-enabled call transcription — a service Threads provides, which syncs to a firm’s phone system and automatically records and transcribes calls selected by the user — can prove incredibly valuable, he notes. This technology can produce accurate and comprehensive transcripts within minutes of a call ending, eliminating the need for manual notetaking and freeing up lawyers’ time to allow them to focus on more valuable tasks.
The benefits of call transcriptions go beyond cost and time savings, notes Yardley. For starters, they can significantly strengthen compliance. “Call transcripts provide a verbatim and time-stamped record of all lawyer-client discussions, which can be used as evidence to clarify any misunderstandings about what was said during a conversation and avoid disputes from ‘one word against another’ situations,” he explains. Moreover, transcripts can also help lawyers accurately keep track of billable hours spent on a case, and can bolster audit trails and satisfy regulatory requirements.
Finding the right tool for the job
While several call recording and transcription tools are available in the market nowadays, Yardley warns that not all are suitable for use in a legal setting. “For starters, transcribing calls on an ad-hoc basis requires technical expertise, is not scalable, and unlikely to meet basic security criteria (e.g. GDPR). Lawyers need calls to be automatically recorded and transcribed subject to well-defined privacy rules. They can then locate transcriptions quickly and easily when needed and not worry about where or how to search for them,” he says. “On top of that, the transcription service Threads uses allows lawyers to add custom dictionaries with technical jargon for different sectors, thus ensuring greater accuracy.”
For law firms, assessing a call transcription tool’s security and data governance policies is crucial. As client calls often contain highly sensitive and confidential information, partnering with a vendor that has robust security measures in place — including strong access controls and data encryption — will minimise the risk of data breaches.
“With generic AI tools, there’s also a risk of data being used for training without consent,” adds Yardley. “In comparison, we designed Threads to meet all security requirements. Our system allows a user to choose which information is shared or kept private to ensure confidential information is only accessed by the right people. Plus, all the data pulled into the Threads system is encrypted at rest on the database server we use, which prevents unauthorised access, data leakage and theft.”
Information is power — when it’s joined up
The true value of phone call transcriptions is evident when these are not used as standalone items, but rather as pieces of the bigger picture of a client matter, emphasises Yardley.
“A transcript alone is limited in value without context — such as background information about the client and the matter, previous communication records, the tone and attitude of the client during a particular call. A fundamental design feature when we created Threads was to link emails and calls together in a timeline view allowing users to see the full conversation history enabling better client understanding and a superior service.”
It is precisely what the vendor offers through its cloud-based Threads Intelligent Message Hub, which brings together call recordings and transcripts alongside emails into a comprehensive database. Using large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) tools, users can search to quickly find the necessary information to support their work at any time. “We often hear from firms that they do not want to add complexity by introducing additional tools or systems which is why we’ve built Threads to work with existing phone set-ups and sync to practice management systems for seamless information flow.”
This forms a valuable source of information for law firms, that can be used to better understand the client, their needs and preferences, and thus improve the quality and speed of service delivery — for example through sentiment analysis of phone calls to get a better understanding of client satisfaction.
Having all correspondence in one firm-wide centralised database also enables better firm-wide collaboration — as fee earners can quickly and easily share information to work together on a specific matter or complete faster handovers — and easier onboarding of new staff.
As technology evolves at a rapid pace, using manual and time-consuming ways to keep a comprehensive record of communications is no longer viable, says Yardley — and he believes now is the time for law firms to embrace innovation to stay competitive. “If you’ve got all communications in one digital place, you can do almost anything you want,” says Yardley. “For instance, you can carry out a sentiment analysis by interrogating all phone calls to get a better understanding of client satisfaction. The possibilities are endless.”
