Barristers have different dictation needs to solicitors. A solicitor typically works from a fixed office — they have a desk, a computer, and administrative support nearby. A barrister works between the Law Library, the courts, solicitors’ offices, and home. The documentation follows them around, and so should the tools.

Most dictation software was built for the solicitor model. Desktop-first, firm-deployed, integrated with a secretary’s workflow. That category of tool — Dragon Legal, BigHand, Diktamen — doesn’t map well onto how most barristers actually operate.

This guide covers what to look for if you’re a barrister choosing dictation software, and where the main options sit against those criteria.

What actually matters for barristers

1. Mobile-first, not desktop-first

The most important criterion, and the one that eliminates most of the market immediately.

If your dictation tool only works on a desktop, you can only dictate at your desk. For a barrister, that means after you’ve travelled from court, switched contexts several times, and let the detail of the morning’s consultation soften in your memory. The value of dictating immediately post-consultation — on the walk back to the Library, in the car park, between the Four Courts and the Bridewell — depends entirely on the tool being in your pocket.

Any dictation tool worth considering for barristers should work on a phone, offline if necessary, with no special hardware or desktop installation required.

2. Irish legal vocabulary out of the box

General speech-to-text will mishandle the terminology barristers use every day. The problems are specific:

Citation formats — [2024] IEHC 123, [2023] IESC 45, neutral citations, court-specific references. A tool that doesn’t know these formats will produce garbled output that takes time to fix.
Latin terms — res judicata, obiter dicta, ultra vires, in camera, mens rea. Common tools either drop these or produce phonetic approximations.
Irish names with fadas — case titles like Ó Domhnaill v Merrick or Mac Giolla Chríost trip up tools trained on English-language text without Irish proper nouns.
Bar of Ireland conventions — document naming, heading conventions, the vocabulary of briefs and opinions.

A tool that gets these right on first use saves time. One that gets them wrong requires a correction pass on every document, which largely defeats the purpose.

3. EU-only data processing

This isn’t a bureaucratic concern — it’s a professional obligation.

When you dictate client instructions, the nature of advice you gave, details of a family law matter, or the facts of a fraud case, that audio contains privileged material. Routing it through US servers brings it within US jurisdiction and raises genuine GDPR compliance questions.

The Bar of Ireland’s data protection guidance requires that client data be handled in line with GDPR. “EU-only processing” means the data stays within the EU legal framework from the moment you stop speaking. Verify this claim explicitly with any tool you consider — not all tools that describe themselves as “GDPR compliant” keep data within the EU.

4. Documents, not transcripts

There’s a meaningful difference between a transcription tool and a dictation tool.

A transcription tool converts speech to text. You get a raw transcript — your words, in order, unformatted. You then have to structure that into a document yourself.

A dictation tool that understands professional context converts speech to structured documents. It knows that when you dictate after a consultation, you probably want an attendance note — with a heading, the parties, the nature of the advice, the instructions received, and the follow-up actions. It knows that when you dictate a set of instructions to counsel, the output should look like instructions, not a stream of consciousness.

For barristers producing attendance notes, opinions, briefs, and advices, the difference between getting a formatted document and getting a wall of text is the difference between the tool being useful and it creating more work.

5. Offline recording

Signal is not guaranteed. The Four Courts basement, a consultation room in a hospital, a site visit in rural Cork. A tool that requires a live internet connection to record means you can’t dictate in those situations.

The right model: record locally, sync and transcribe when you have signal. The audio sits on your phone and gets processed once you’re back on a network. You don’t need to wait or find WiFi before you can start dictating.

The main options

Dragon Legal

The established name in legal dictation. Works well for solicitors with fixed desktop workflows and high document volume. For barristers, the problems are fundamental: desktop-only, requires voice training, limited Irish accent support, US data processing, and no mobile recording capability. A detailed comparison is here. The short version: Dragon was built for how lawyers worked in 2005.

BigHand

Enterprise workflow software for large firms with a dedicated IT department, a secretarial pool, and a centralised document management system. Not relevant for barristers at the independent Bar. If you’re a member of the Law Library, there’s no IT department to deploy it and no secretarial workflow to integrate with.

General AI transcription (Otter.ai, Whisper, etc.)

High accuracy on general speech, widely available, often free at entry level. But these are transcription tools, not dictation tools — they produce raw text, not structured legal documents. They also typically process data in the US, which creates GDPR issues for privileged material. Otter.ai in particular is designed for meeting notes, not legal documentation.

Purpose-built mobile legal dictation

The category that fits barristers best. Tools in this space — including dictate& — are designed to be used on a phone, in the field, producing structured legal documents rather than raw transcripts. The better ones are built specifically for Irish legal practice, with Irish citation formats, Bar of Ireland conventions, Irish accent recognition, and EU-only data processing.

This is the category to evaluate first if you’re starting from scratch.

The criteria in practice

	Dragon Legal	BigHand	Otter.ai	Mobile legal dictation
Works on phone	No	No	Yes	Yes
Irish legal vocabulary	Partial	Partial	No	Yes
EU-only data	No	Varies	No	Yes (best options)
Structured documents	No	Via secretary	No	Yes
Offline recording	N/A	No	No	Yes
Setup time	Hours	Days	Minutes	Minutes
Cost	€500-700+	Enterprise	Free/low	Subscription

What to ask before choosing

If you’re evaluating any dictation tool for use as a barrister, these are the questions worth asking before committing:

Where is the audio processed? EU only, or US/global infrastructure?
Does it produce formatted documents or raw transcripts? What does the output actually look like?
How does it handle [2024] IEHC and similar citation formats? Ask for a demo with real Irish citations.
Does it work offline? What happens if you record without signal?
What’s the setup time to first useful output? Hours of voice training, or immediate?

The tool that answers all five questions well, for a barrister at the Irish Bar, is a mobile-first AI dictation tool built specifically for Irish legal practice. That’s a narrow category, but it’s the right one.

dictate& is built specifically for Irish barristers — junior counsel and senior counsel — with Irish citation formats, Bar of Ireland conventions, EU-only data processing, and offline recording. See how it works →