We build dictation software for people who can't afford to get it wrong.
dictate& is built in Ireland for professionals who handle sensitive, consequential information every day — barristers and solicitors.
The problem
Professionals spend hours each week turning spoken conversations into written documents. Attendance notes written from memory at 9pm. Session notes typed between patients. Opinions drafted long after the consultation.
The tools that exist don't fit. Phone dictation produces unformatted text that needs as much editing as typing from scratch. Dragon costs hundreds per licence and ties you to a desktop. Neither understands Irish legal terminology or case citations.
What we built
dictate& is a voice dictation tool that produces structured, professional documents — not raw transcripts. You speak naturally after a meeting or consultation, and dictate& returns a formatted document: an attendance note with the right heading and structure, an opinion with proper paragraphs, a letter in the format your profession expects.
It works on your phone. It understands legal terminology, case citations, Latin terms, and Irish accents. Processing and storage are EU-only — Dublin for storage, Stockholm for AI processing.
Why Ireland
We're based in Ireland because that's where our users are, and because we believe the tools professionals use should be built with an understanding of how they actually work. The Irish Bar operates differently from the English Bar. Irish solicitors' practices have different rhythms and conventions. Building locally means building with that context, not adapting a US product for a market it doesn't understand.
It also means EU-only infrastructure is a given, not an add-on. When your users handle privileged legal material and patient data, keeping that data in the EU isn't a feature — it's a minimum requirement.
Who's behind it
dictate& is built by James Harnedy and Cindy Zoons. James is a software engineer based in Cork with thirty years in the industry, having led engineering teams and built products at companies including Johnson Controls, Gibson Innovations, Over-C, and most recently Keelvar — a Cork-based AI procurement platform — where he served as VP Engineering. He also runs his own mobile development consultancy, Appesque. Cindy is a legal assistant to two barristers in Cork — she sees the documentation problem from the inside every day.
dictate& came directly from that combination: someone who builds software and someone who works in the profession it's built for. Cindy knew that barristers and solicitors were losing hours to documentation that could be dictated in minutes — if the tools actually understood legal language, worked on a phone, and kept data in the EU. James built it.
Our approach
Built for the individual practitioner. No IT department required, no enterprise procurement, no committee sign-off. Sign up on your phone and start dictating.
Profession-specific, not general-purpose. A tool that tries to serve everyone serves no one well. dictate& is built for specific professions with specific vocabulary, document formats, and workflows.
Privacy by design, not privacy by policy. EU-only processing is a hard technical constraint, not a configuration option. Your data is never used for model training.
Get in touch
If you have questions, feedback, or just want to talk about how dictation could work for your practice, we'd like to hear from you.