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Free Legal Dictation

Legal Dictation Software

Speak a case note, a memo or a letter into any recorder and watch it turn into text, with the sentences broken apart and punctuation filled in.

  • Case notes, memos and correspondence
  • One speaker, one unbroken run
  • Numbered points kept as separate lines
  • Legal dictation you can search later
Dictate a Note

What Legal Dictation Software Replaces

One spoken note.

Dictation is one person working alone. No follow-up question is coming, so a note arrives as one unbroken run: a case summary talked through on the drive back from a client, or a memo between hearings. Legal dictation software is built for that shape of recording. What the audio lacks is punctuation. Sentences run together and a list of three items sounds like one long clause. The text returns in sentences and paragraphs, so a note can be read at a desk instead of replayed in the car.

What the Legal Dictation Tool Handles

Six jobs that come with a spoken note.

Speak into whatever is nearby

A phone voice note, a handheld recorder or a call recording goes in untouched.

Punctuation placed automatically

Commas, full stops and question marks land where each sentence breaks, so a legal dictation does not come back as one long run.

Keep spoken lists in order

Where a dictation counts out three points, the text keeps them separate instead of merging them into prose.

Follow a change of mind

A correction spoken aloud stays where the speaker put it, so the reason for the change remains visible.

Work in more than one language

A dictation that slips between two languages comes back in both, which suits cross-border client work.

Send the note on as text

Copy the finished legal dictation into a document, an email or a case system, and edit before it goes out.

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Installed dictation software asks for more than a licence

Voice recognition had to be installed on one machine, trained on one voice and licensed per seat before it wrote a word. Add a new laptop and the setup begins again. Running legal dictation software in a browser removes that purchase: a recording goes in, text comes out, on whichever machine the lawyer is on.
Dictate a Note
A licence screen replaced by a browser tab
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A dictated note arrives without punctuation

Listen and the sentences are held together by breath alone. Without punctuation a case note runs for four hundred words as one line, leaving the reader to work out where a thought ended and the next began. Placing the full stops and commas as the text is written is what makes a legal dictation readable at a desk.
Dictate a Note
An unpunctuated block of dictated notes
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Figures and references need a second listen

Dates, sums and statutory references carry most of the meaning in a dictated note and are the least reliable part of an automatic transcript. A figure heard as fifteen rather than fifty changes the advice. These passages are worth playing back, which is why no one should sign off on a legal dictation without a pass over the numbers.
Dictate a Note
Figures marked for a second listen
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One voice is simpler, until it changes its mind

A single speaker removes the hardest problem in transcription: sorting out who said what. What replaces it is the spoken edit: strike that, scratch the last line, a name corrected halfway through a sentence. Those corrections stay where the speaker put them, because the lawyer reading the draft knows which version was meant, and legal dictation should not decide that.
Dictate a Note
A spoken correction left where it was made
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Privileged detail belongs in the firm's system

Dictation is often the least guarded way a case detail gets onto a file. A recording is handled long enough to yield its words and then released, with no case archive left behind. Client names and anything covered by privilege belong in the systems the firm controls, not in a tab left open on a shared machine at the end of the day.
Dictate a Note
A confidential note kept off shared machines
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What the draft is good for

Text is enough to keep a file current, to brief a colleague or to start a letter that would otherwise wait for a quiet afternoon. It is a working document rather than a signed record, and the review pass settles the wording. Legal dictation software takes the typing out of the day without claiming to be the authority on the matter.
Dictate a Note
A draft note waiting to be filed

How to Use Legal Dictation Software

Three steps from a spoken note to a filed one.

Step 1

Add the recording

Upload the dictation from a phone, a recorder or a call, in whatever format the device saved it.

Step 2

Let it be written out

Each legal dictation is worked through and typed up in order, with sentences separated and punctuation inserted as it goes.

Step 3

Read and correct it

Fix names, dates and figures against the audio, then copy the finished note into the case file.

Who Dictates With Legal Dictation

Four jobs that end with a spoken note.

ME

Mark Ellison

Solo Practitioner

I dictate right after a client meeting and the note used to sit on my phone for a week. The recording becomes text before I am back at the office.

RC

Renee Castillo

Paralegal

Four attorneys dictate differently, some on a phone, some on a handset recorder. Having one place to drop any of those files keeps the case notes far more current than my typing ever did.

HB

Howard Bishop

Managing Partner

We priced per-seat licences and per-minute transcription in the same month. Being able to put one memo through the browser first made the decision for a small firm much simpler.

SO

Sandra Okafor

In-House Counsel

Most of my legal dictation is short, a memo after a contract review or a note from a call with the business team, and getting text back in minutes fits how I actually work.

Questions About Legal Dictation

What it writes, what it misses and what it keeps.

Start Legal Dictation

Speak the note once and watch the text appear, with the lines broken apart and the punctuation already in place.

Dictate a Note
Legal Dictation

A Note Typed Before You Get Back

Upload a dictation from a phone or a recorder and get readable text back, ready to check and file.