the problem with cloud transcription for legal audio
a transcription vendor that holds your client interviews, witness calls, or attorney notes is a third party with access to privileged material. whether that breaks privilege depends on the jurisdiction, the vendor's contract, the sophistication of the client, and the patience of opposing counsel. the honest answer is: maybe.
even when privilege survives, a vendor with the audio is a subpoena target. Crispin v. Christian Audigier, Inc. and the long arc of post-Stored Communications Act cases have made it clear that documents held by third-party processors are reachable through process most attorneys would rather not respond to. the simplest defense is not to put them there in the first place.
what changes with on-device transcription
private mode runs the speech-recognition model in your browser. the audio file you transcribe never makes a network request. no vendor receives it, no vendor caches it, no vendor's backups contain it. there is nothing for opposing counsel to subpoena from a transcription vendor because there is no transcription vendor.
this doesn't change what's discoverable from you — if your local copy of the audio is responsive to a request, it's responsive. it changes the vendor surface, which is the surface most attorneys had no way to defend before.
workflow
- record on the recorder of your choice. depositions on the court reporter's equipment, witness calls on a phone-line recorder, attorney notes on whatever you use.
- move the audio file to your laptop. open audiohighlight in private mode in your browser.
- drop the file in. transcription runs locally — typically one minute per ten of audio on a current laptop.
- review. fix speaker labels in bulk. click any word to verify it against the second of audio it came from. flag passages for follow-up.
- export. .docx for the file, .srt for trial-prep video, plain text for redaction tools, json for case-management import.
where on-device fits and where it doesn't
- fits: depositions, witness interviews, attorney notes, client calls, internal-investigation interviews. anywhere a third-party processor would expand the privilege surface or the discoverable surface.
- doesn't fit: anything that needs to be shared in real-time with co-counsel across firms. the editor is local — sharing means exporting and sending the file, not sharing a link. for collaborative review, cloud mode (with a signed agreement and the usual engagement-letter language) makes more sense.
what we don't promise
this is a feature description, not legal advice. privilege questions are jurisdiction-specific and fact-specific. on-device transcription removes one third party from the chain — it does not, by itself, settle privilege questions, and it does not change a court's discretion. ask your ethics counsel.
we don't claim courtroom-grade accuracy from any AI transcription tool — including ours. the editor is built so you can verify quotes that matter: click the word, hear the audio. the benchmark publishes our cleanup-time numbers on a courtroom-grade deposition file.
pricing
$0.25 per minute. $15 for an hour-long deposition. private mode and cloud mode are the same price. no subscription, no minimum. firm-level pricing for batch import arrives after launch. for now, the individual buyer (associate, paralegal, solo attorney) is the buyer.