Key points
- AI notetakers, transcription tools, and meeting summaries can record and store attorney-client conversations, raising confidentiality and privilege risks.
- Lawyers should address AI recording and transcription in engagement agreements, including consent, limitations, and review expectations.
- When AI notetakers are used in client meetings, lawyers should inform clients of the risks and review any AI-generated meeting summaries.
- Under ethical rules, Illinois lawyers must perform a reasonable assessment of third-party AI vendors, including their data storage, access, retention, and model training practices.
Picture this: You are wrapping up a Zoom call during which your client has shared sensitive financial details and a few unflattering facts, and asked sharp questions about litigation risk. You are in lawyer mode, listening carefully, mentally organizing issues, and asking follow-up questions. Then you notice a small icon sitting quietly in the corner of the screen.
Who invited this guest? And, more importantly, what are your ethical obligations now that this AI notetaker is there?
What are AI notetakers?
AI notetaker apps, including those built into Zoom and Teams, record, transcribe, and summarize conversations that once lived in memory and handwritten notes. They can be hidden and auto-activated on videoconferencing platforms, which can result in a recording of the meeting without your consent or your client’s.
But AI notetakers aren’t the only recording devices lawyers should be aware of. Mobile device apps, wearable recorders, and AI pendants can also openly or covertly memorialize conversations. These devices can unknowingly enter your client meetings, courtrooms, and other private settings.
On one hand, these tools can document a meeting or presentation by providing verbatim transcripts, searchable records, and action-item summaries. A transcript can help clients who are deaf or hard of hearing or who have language barriers better understand and participate in their cases. Clients can easily return to the record later for further review or use translation applications to better understand the discussion.
On the other hand, if AI notetakers are recording and preserving attorney-client meetings, lawyers must consider questions about legality,* confidentiality, privilege, and the ability to maintain the open, transparent dialogue required for sound professional judgment.
Do AI notetakers threaten attorney-client privilege?
In client meetings, lawyers aim to create secure environments where both the lawyer and client feel comfortable sharing vulnerable and confidential information. This candor is essential to the attorney-client relationship, as effective legal representation depends on a complete and truthful understanding of the facts. Clients must be able to disclose favorable and potentially damaging information, knowing it will not be used against them or shared without their consent.
The attorney-client privilege safeguards this trust by protecting communication made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice from compelled disclosure. By assuring clients that their comments will remain confidential, the privilege encourages full transparency, enabling attorneys to provide sound counsel, anticipate challenges, and advocate more effectively within the bounds of the law.
AI notetakers can change that dynamic in a fundamental way. When enabled, these tools can capture verbatim audio, use voice recognition to attribute statements to specific speakers, and generate summaries in seconds.
That means a privileged conversation between an attorney and client could now become a permanent, searchable record – with or without the attorney’s or client’s consent. The record is transmitted, processed, and stored by a cloud-based vendor and may be accessible to the vendor for training and analytics under their terms of service. This risks the loss of attorney-client privilege and the further opening of confidential information to discovery.
It is reasonable, then, that if an AI notetaker or other recording device is knowingly used, it can impact what clients and attorneys are comfortable sharing. Attorneys may be less willing to brainstorm out loud, float alternative theories, or candidly acknowledge weaknesses in a case. That reluctance is precisely the opposite of the kind of lawyering that produces the best outcomes for clients.
For clients, recording the moment can erode the sense of safety and trust that underpins the attorney-client relationship. They might avoid sharing sensitive details that are crucial to the case, which can lead to weaker advocacy and faulty advice.
What does NYC Bar Formal Opinion 2025-6 say?
In December 2025, the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics issued Formal Opinion 2025-6: Ethical Issues Affecting Use of AI to Record, Transcribe, and Summarize Conversations with Clients. While the opinion is grounded in the New York Rules of Professional Conduct and is not binding on Illinois lawyers, its guidance tracks closely with existing Illinois duties and offers a useful roadmap for common scenarios of AI capturing conversations with clients.
The opinion addresses two perspectives: (1) the lawyer using AI to record a client conversation, and (2) the client using AI to record a conversation with their lawyer.
The key components of the opinion for lawyers are:
- Obtain informed consent before recording. An attorney should not secretly activate an AI notetaker during a client conversation. Undisclosed recording is inconsistent with the candor and honesty lawyers owe clients and runs afoul of the trust at the heart of the attorney-client relationship. (In Illinois, a prohibition on secret recording is consistent with IRPC Rule 8.4’s ban on deceptive conduct, not to mention other unlawful acts such as wiretapping or eavesdropping).
- Consider confidentiality and tactical implications. Before enabling any AI transcription tool, a lawyer must analyze where the data goes, how long it is retained, whether the vendor can use the content to train its models, and whether access by a third-party vendor could give rise to a privilege waiver argument.
- Independently review AI-generated transcripts and summaries for accuracy. An AI summary of a client meeting should not be relied upon until the participating lawyer has reviewed and verified it. Errors in AI transcripts – and there will be errors – can distort the advice of counsel, mischaracterize client statements, and create content wholly absent from the actual conversation.
- Counsel clients about their use of AI recording. If an attorney knows or suspects a client is running their own AI tool during a meeting, the attorney has a duty to advise the client of the risks, including the potential disclosure of the recording to third-party servers, destruction of privilege, and the possibility that a summary generated by the client’s app may not accurately capture what was said.
How does this impact Illinois lawyers?
The underlying duties raised by the New York opinion are equally important for Illinois lawyers. Technology competence requires at least a basic understanding of how AI meeting notetakers function and how they transmit, store, and use their data.
Confidentiality obligations demand an analysis of security protocols before any client conversation is routed through a third-party platform. Supervision duties under IRPC Rule 5.3 apply to both human staff and the systems they are authorized to use.
Under IRPC Rule 1.6, Illinois lawyers must make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of client information. When a lawyer routes a client conversation through a third-party AI vendor, that duty requires a reasonable evaluation of several risk factors:
- Data transmission, storage, and retention. How are transcripts transmitted and stored? For how long? Can you compel deletion? What information safeguards are in place?
- Model training. Do the vendor’s terms of service permit the use of client data to train its AI models? If so, that data may be shared with a much wider universe of parties than the lawyer and client intended.
- Vendor access. Does the vendor’s staff have the ability to access data content? If so, can a court later find that the presence of this third party constitutes a waiver of attorney-client privilege?
The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission’s (ARDC) Illinois Attorney’s Guide to Implementing AI provides a three-step framework for choosing an appropriate AI tool, which lawyers should apply when considering AI notetakers. The framework includes: (1) classifying the sensitivity of the information, (2) identifying whether the AI tool is internal or third-party, and (3) evaluating the vendor’s data safeguards.
BYO AI: When a client brings their own AI notetaker
The greater concern for attorneys is when clients bring their own AI tools into attorney-client conversations. When clients use tools unfamiliar to the lawyer, the lawyer may never see the recordings, transcripts, or summaries, and has no ability to verify their accuracy or ensure adequate security. That creates a real risk for lawyers in fulfilling their ethical duties and causing future confusion or missteps if a client relies on an inaccurate AI-generated summary.
Lawyers can reduce many of these problems by setting expectations at the outset. In engagement discussions and agreements, lawyers should advise clients not to use their own AI tools to record conversations without notifying the lawyer in advance and providing them with an opportunity to assess the tool.
If a client insists on using an unvetted tool, the lawyer should take steps to protect the client’s interests and the integrity of the representation to the fullest extent possible. If those protections cannot be ensured, the lawyer should consider whether continuing the representation remains consistent with their professional responsibilities and the client’s best interests.
At a minimum, lawyers can request that conversations not be recorded at all, especially in sensitive matters. Engagement letters should state that any recordings, transcripts, or summaries generated by client-selected AI tools are not dispositive or binding on the lawyer unless promptly shared with the lawyer, so they can independently review and correct them.
Lawyers should also advise clients that because the storage and handling of data by AI tools is beyond the lawyer’s control, there is an increased risk to confidentiality and the loss of attorney-client privilege.
How can lawyers prepare for AI notetaking in client meetings?
As AI recording apps and devices become more pervasive, lawyers should educate themselves on AI notetaking tools, to get ahead of these client conversations. Here are four steps to start:
- Inventory where AI is already listening. Check the default settings in your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other meeting applications. Know what notetaking tools are running and disable them until you are fully informed on how to use them ethically, if at all.
- Map each tool against the ARDC AI Guide’s framework. As with any technology application, consider what privacy and security safeguards are in place. Classify the sensitivity of the information involved, determine whether the tool is internal or third-party, and review the vendor’s data safeguards. If the answers aren’t satisfactory, disable the tool until they are. This may not be possible when a client brings their own tool.
- Update your engagement letter and client communication practices. Address AI notetaking in your standard engagement agreement to inform clients of the risks to confidentiality and privilege. Make informed consent the rule, not the exception.
- Comply with applicable laws and regulations. Even with informed consent and ethical guardrails, lawyers and clients may be violating other privacy protections. Examine the laws and regulations in your jurisdiction.
Press pause before you press record
AI notetaking in legal practice is a reality that demands immediate attention. These tools are not inherently off-limits, but their use requires the same judgment lawyers bring to every other aspect of client representation. Competence, confidentiality, and candor do not pause when a recording starts.
The attorney-client relationship has always depended on honesty, which is a product of trust. And trust, in this context, requires that you and your clients know exactly who – and what – is in the room.
[* Note: This article limits its examination to Illinois ethical implications for lawyers. Beyond ethical implications, Illinois law imposes some of the nation’s most stringent requirements on the use of recording technologies in private conversations. For example, under the Illinois eavesdropping statute, it is generally unlawful to record private conversations without the informed consent of all participants, and the use of AI tools that record or transcribe meetings must be fully disclosed and consented to by every attendee. Additionally, if the AI tool processes biometric identifiers, including “voiceprints,” Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) further requires very strict notice, consent, retention, destruction, and data security measures. Be sure to examine the laws and regulations in your jurisdiction.]
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