AI Note-Taking at Law Firms: Decide What You Keep Before You Switch It On

At a Glance

• Who this is for: Managing partners, COLPs and Heads of IT at UK firms where fee earners have started using AI note-taking tools on client calls.
• The problem: Every recorded call now produces a word-for-word transcript, and in many rollouts the firm has not decided how long it is kept, who can see it or who can delete it.
• What is changing: The SRA's August 2026 warning notice puts client data in AI tools under named conduct duties, and the Business and Property Courts' disclosure rules already treat a transcript as a document.
• The takeaway: Set retention, access and legal hold rules before the pilot starts, and check the tool can enforce them.

AI note-taking tools turn client calls into permanent, searchable records. Before a firm switches one on, it needs to decide which meetings get recorded, how long recordings and transcripts are kept compared with approved notes, who can access and delete them, and how a legal hold stops deletion. Left undecided, the tool's default settings make those choices.

Why AI Note-Taking Needs a Policy Before the Pilot

Before these tools arrived, a client call lived in two places: the memories of the people on it and a few lines in the file note. Now it can live as a full transcript, often with the audio, stored on a vendor's platform and emailed to everyone who attended.

That transcript keeps the parts a fee earner would never put in a file note. A partner thinking aloud about a weak point in the case. A client saying they aren't sure something is compliant. An offhand remark about the other side.

A post on r/legaltech on 21 October made the point that most discussion of these tools covers accuracy and privacy, and skips a third question: what has the firm created by turning it on? One reply put the risk plainly: "otherwise, the default settings end up making that decision for you."

Regulators are paying attention to the data side already. We covered the SRA's Misuse of AI warning notice in SRA AI warning notice: what your firm has to put in place. As Legal Futures reported, the notice states: "Both paid for and free-to-use AI tools may not provide the contractual and technical safeguards needed to maintain client confidentiality." In Ireland, the Law Society's Technology Committee published a guide to AI note-taking tools in June 2026 that lists consent, privilege, GDPR and data storage among the tensions to resolve (Gazette.ie).

What a Recorded Call Creates

In the Business and Property Courts, Practice Direction 57AD says a document "includes any record of any description containing information", in any form, paper or electronic. A transcript is a record. So is the audio file, and so is the AI summary sitting in each attendee's inbox.

That means one AI note-taking session can leave several versions of the same conversation, often in different systems with different settings:

• the audio or video recording on the vendor's platform
• the verbatim transcript
• the AI summary or action list, frequently emailed out automatically
• the file note a fee earner writes, if anyone still writes one

Any of these can fall within disclosure if it is relevant to the issues, and each has to be found and preserved when a dispute arrives.

Data protection pulls the other way. Under UK GDPR, personal data must be kept "for no longer than is necessary", and the ICO's guidance says firms need "a policy setting standard retention periods wherever possible" (ICO). A tool that keeps every recording forever, because that is the out-of-the-box setting, sits badly with that principle.

So the firm has to keep less as a matter of routine, and keep everything relevant once a dispute is in view. Both depend on decisions made in advance.

The Preservation Duty Starts Before a Claim Is Issued

Timing is where firms get caught out. Paragraph 3.1 of PD 57AD applies to a person who "knows that it may become a party to proceedings that may be commenced". That person must take reasonable steps to preserve documents in its control that may be relevant, before any claim form exists.

Paragraph 4.1 then says the documents to be preserved include those which "might otherwise be deleted or destroyed in accordance with a document retention policy". Paragraph 4.2 requires reasonable steps so that agents or third parties holding documents on a party's behalf do not delete them, and a vendor storing recordings for the firm can fall into that category. Legal representatives carry their own duty under paragraph 3.2 to preserve documents in their control and to help the client comply. For a law firm, then, the duty can arise twice: in its own disputes, and as the representative holding recordings of client calls.

Two things follow. A short retention period, set in advance and applied consistently, is a sensible way to hold less material. But once a dispute is foreseeable, automatic deletion has to stop for the relevant recordings and transcripts, wherever they sit.

A firm that sets 30-day auto-delete with no way to pause it for one matter has swapped a storage problem for a preservation problem. The retention setting and the legal hold have to be designed together.

PD 57AD governs disclosure in the Business and Property Courts. Other courts and tribunals run on different rules, so your litigation team should confirm the position for the work you do. The design principle holds either way: decide retention in advance, and make sure you can suspend it.

Five Decisions to Make Before the Pilot

Each of these needs an answer, and a named owner, before the first client call is recorded. The owners below are how we would split the work; your firm may draw the lines differently, as long as every row has a name against it.

Clients also need to know what is happening. Tell them when a call is recorded, what the firm does with the transcript and how long it is kept. Whether consent or notice is required, and in what form, depends on the circumstances, so take advice before setting the wording.

Questions to Ask the Vendor Before You Sign

Most of the five decisions above only work if the tool supports them. These questions test that:

1. Where are recordings, transcripts and summaries processed and stored, and in which jurisdiction?
2. Can we set different retention periods for audio, transcripts and summaries, and is every deletion logged?
3. Can we place a hold on a specific matter, user or meeting so automatic deletion stops?
4. Do the terms allow our data to be used to train or improve models, and is any opt-out fixed in the contract or only in a setting someone could change?
5. Can we stop summaries being emailed automatically, especially to external attendees?
6. Can we export transcripts and their metadata in a usable format if they are needed for disclosure?

If a vendor cannot answer questions 2 and 3 in writing, the tool cannot carry the policy, however good the transcripts are.

Common Pitfalls

• Fee earners connecting note-taking bots to their own accounts, so recordings sit where the firm cannot search them or place a hold.
• An aggressive auto-delete period with no way to suspend it for a single matter.
• Treating the AI summary as the file note without anyone reviewing it.
• Forgetting the copies: summaries emailed to attendees stay in inboxes after the platform deletes the original.
• Accepting the vendor's default retention setting and calling it the firm's policy.

How 3Rive Approaches This

Much of this depends on where the tool runs and who controls its settings. Our AI services team builds legal AI tooling inside the firm's own tenant, so firm data never leaves the firm's environment and recordings and transcripts stay in systems your IT team already governs.

Where tools are already in use, AI Readiness in Five Days through Tech Advisory assesses infrastructure, process and governance and ends with a costed 90-day plan. We set out what that week covers in AI readiness assessment for law firms. The same habit runs through our delivery work, as in our case management consolidation for a global law firm, where the reconciliation checks were agreed before any data moved.

Key Takeaways

• An AI note-taking tool can create a recording, a verbatim transcript and an emailed summary for every call it joins.
• Under PD 57AD, the duty to preserve relevant documents applies before a claim is issued and reaches documents a retention policy would otherwise delete.
• UK GDPR requires personal data to be kept no longer than necessary, so keeping every recording indefinitely is also a risk.
• Firms should set separate retention periods for recordings, transcripts and approved notes, and confirm the tool can suspend deletion for a legal hold.
• If the firm leaves these decisions unmade, the vendor's default settings become its records policy.