Otter.ai is one of the most widely used AI transcription tools in the world. It’s cheap, it works immediately, and the accuracy on clear speech is genuinely good. It’s no surprise that some Irish solicitors and barristers have tried it, or are currently using it for some tasks.

But Otter.ai was built for a specific use case — recording and transcribing meetings — and legal practice in Ireland is a different context with different requirements. Before using Otter.ai for client consultations, attendance notes, or any matter involving privileged information, there are a few things worth understanding.

What Otter.ai actually does well

It’s worth being clear about this, because Otter is a good product within its intended scope.

Accuracy. Otter’s transcription accuracy on standard English speech in reasonable audio conditions is high. For a clearly spoken consultation in a quiet room, you’ll get a transcript that captures most of what was said.

Speaker identification. Otter can distinguish between multiple speakers and label them in the transcript. For meetings with several participants, this is useful.

Real-time transcription. Otter transcribes as you speak, so you can watch the text appear live. For some use cases, this is valuable.

Price. The free tier is genuinely usable. Paid plans are inexpensive relative to dedicated professional dictation tools.

If you’re transcribing internal team meetings, recording a lecture, or capturing a non-confidential conversation, Otter does the job well at low cost.

Where it falls short for Irish legal practice

It’s a transcription tool, not a dictation tool

This is the most important distinction. Otter converts speech to text. That’s it. What you get back is a transcript — your words, in order, with speaker labels if there were multiple people.

It doesn’t know you’re a barrister. It doesn’t know you want an attendance note. It doesn’t structure the output into a document with headings, a narrative section, action items, or the conventions of a legal brief. You get a wall of text that you then have to turn into a document yourself.

For a solicitor who wants to record a client meeting and have it transcribed so their secretary can type it up, this is workable. For a barrister who wants to dictate on the walk back from court and have a formatted attendance note waiting for review, it isn’t.

This is the most serious concern for legal practitioners.

Otter.ai is a US company. It processes and stores audio on US servers. When you record a client consultation — instructions received, advice given, facts of the matter, personal details — and upload that audio to Otter, you are transferring that data to US infrastructure.

Ireland’s GDPR framework, and the Bar of Ireland’s data protection guidance, require that personal and sensitive data be handled within a legal framework that protects it. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework provides some basis for US data transfers, but it has faced legal challenge and its long-term stability is uncertain. More practically: routing privileged client audio through a US cloud service requires a legal basis that many solicitors and barristers haven’t formally established.

The short version: if you’re dictating anything that contains client-privileged material — which is most of what Irish lawyers dictate — you need to be confident about where that data goes. Otter’s answer is US servers.

Irish legal vocabulary

Otter was trained on general English speech. It handles everyday vocabulary well. It does not handle:

Irish citation formats: [2024] IEHC 123, [2023] IESC 45, [2024] IECA 12
Latin legal terms: res judicata, obiter dicta, ultra vires, nisi, in camera
Irish names with fadas: Ó Briain, Ó Domhnaill, Mac Giolla Chríost
Irish court names and procedural terminology
Bar of Ireland conventions

You’ll spend time correcting every transcript before it’s usable for legal purposes. For short documents dictated frequently, the correction overhead adds up quickly.

No offline recording

Otter requires an active internet connection to record and transcribe. If you’re in a basement consultation room at the Four Courts, on a train with patchy signal, or anywhere without reliable connectivity, Otter won’t work — or will record locally and sync later with reduced functionality.

For mobile legal dictation, offline recording is a basic requirement. You should be able to dictate anywhere and have the audio transcribed when you reconnect.

Who Otter.ai is actually suitable for (in legal practice)

There are legitimate uses of Otter in a legal context, specifically where the data involved is not client-privileged and the output format doesn’t need to be a structured legal document:

Recording and transcribing internal team meetings
Capturing notes from non-confidential planning sessions
Transcribing interviews or research conversations where no client privilege is involved
Personal productivity notes that don’t involve client data

The key question is always: does this recording involve client-privileged material? If yes, the data location question becomes serious and Otter’s US infrastructure is a problem.

The alternative

For Irish solicitors and barristers who want the convenience of AI transcription — speak naturally, get a document — but need EU-only data processing, Irish legal vocabulary, and structured document output rather than raw transcripts, the right category of tool is purpose-built mobile legal dictation.

dictate& is built specifically for this: EU-only processing, Irish citation formats and legal vocabulary, offline recording, and formatted documents rather than transcripts. For barristers who want to dictate attendance notes on the move, it’s a different tool for a different job than Otter.

The comparison isn’t really Otter.ai vs dictate& — it’s raw transcription vs structured legal dictation. Those are different problems.

If you’re a barrister or solicitor currently using Otter.ai for client matters, it’s worth reviewing whether your current use is covered by an appropriate data transfer mechanism under GDPR, and whether the transcript output is actually saving you time versus a tool that produces formatted documents. See how dictate& works for Irish barristers →