A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

vintagedave

Paywall: can anyone share what the issue is? Inaccuracy in meeting minutes? Leaking private info, re security of notes? I have never used them (don't trust them to accurately capture what is important in a meeting vs just noting what's mentioned), but the concept seems very useful to me.

Tistron

https://archive.is/wPKhf

skinfaxi

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/business/dealbook/ai-note...

burningion

The main point raised in the article is that these bots may void attorney client privileges. But the real danger with these IMO is that they're turning casual conversations into a permanent record, and one that will be completely discoverable in court, should the company get into trouble later.

pfortuny

Honest question: Do these systems not share data with the AI servers? Or are they all local (on-site, not on-computer)? I am totally baffled by the trust people put on these systems, sharing with them the most obviously private data.

sandworm101

>> Executives and corporate boards generally expect conversations with their legal team about legal matters to have attorney-client privilege. They lose that protection if they share the same information with outside parties — and it’s possible that an A.I. note taker could have the same effect. Total oversimplification. The fact is the privilege is a rule totally in the hands of the court. Every time a new communications technology come up, someone shouts about privilege but the courts still accept it. (Telephones, cell phones, emails, IMs, zoom court, each have had their day in the A-C privilege debate and been accepted.) What matters is that the parties intended and expected communications to be privileged. As an example. I had a crim law prof who had been a NYC public defender in the 70s/80s. She had regularly interviewed clients at Rikers Island. All interviews were listened to by guards and she said you could even pay to get a copy of the recording. But these interviews were still covered by attorney-client privilege. No court would allow such evidence, but that doesn't mean that the prison could not use it for jail safety. Why does this matter: Because the presence of a third party doesn't mean anything. This isn't magic. An eavesdropper does not nullify the spell. Whether something is or is not privileged depends on the rules followed in the local jurisdiction, and no jurisdiction has ever followed a simplistic "presence of a third part" rule. Until someone demonstrates an example of an AI actually leaking privileged information, courts are going to chalk it up as just another electronic tool for recording communications.

rpaddock

Some companies want no records at all, see: "2028 – A Dystopian Story By Jack Ganssle": http://www.ganssle.com/articles/2028adystopianstory.htm Known as ’The Rule of 26’, which is sometimes given as a reason NOT to keep engineering notebooks etc. By Federal Rule 26 you are guilty if you did not volunteer the records before they are requested. Including any backups. From Cornel Law: LII Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26. Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery Rule 26. Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery (a) Required Disclosures. (1) Initial Disclosure. (A) In General. Except as exempted by Rule 26(a)(1)(B) or as otherwise stipulated or ordered by the court, a party must, without awaiting a discovery request, provide to the other parties: (i) the name and, if known, the address and telephone number of each individual likely to have discoverable information—along with the subjects of that information—that the disclosing party may use to support its claims or defenses, unless the use would be solely for impeachment; (ii) a copy—or a description by category and location—of all documents, electronically stored information, and tangible things that the disclosing party has in its possession, custody, or control and may use to support its claims or defenses, unless the use would be solely for impeachment; … https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_26

analogpixel

unrealted to the article, but how do you make a page that that prevents the mouse scroll wheel from working? that's pretty impressive.

natebc

gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/business/dealbook/ai-note...

gwbas1c

Back when I was in college, in a fraternity, we always assumed that the phones were tapped. Specifically, we never spoke about alcohol or marijuana (now legal) on the phone. Even today, I generally assume that my phone could be tapped; even when talking with my trusted work colleagues, friends, and family. I'm extra careful about dirty jokes or "grey morality" in video conferences and email. The same applies to speaking with lawyers. You never know when some motivated asshole wants to twist your words out of context, and the possibility of a recording just enables that behavior. --- I know enough about security and encryption to know that unless I've exchanged keys physically with someone else, there really is no guarantee that someone hasn't compromised a certificate somewhere. (IE, a "secure" connection on the internet is secure enough for a credit card.)

testfoobar

I would be concerned about transcription error perhaps (e.g. non native speaker) where precision matters: engineering, compliance, regulation, legal, etc.

atonse

This is where I think either realtime transcription (or just in time followed by deleting everything) will be an end state. Especially real-time transcription where the AI actually takes notes (instead of just recording every word and has a dump of it somewhere) can be appealing. Then there isn't any record of the raw sentences, and things that aren't relevant are immediately discarded without any written record. OpenAI's realtime whisper and other such models will become the default over time.

jgalt212

Stringer Bell would be furious.

samuelknight

AI meeting notes are not transcripts. While they do cause an unprecedented amount of record creation (as the article notes), there are also challenges that a defense can use. Note takers get small details wrong all the time, they often are making notes FOR someone so it biases what is documented, their prompting is opaque, and they can't be cross examined. We will likely see situations where the note taker and a witness participating in the meeting disagree?

redmaple892

Surprised healthcare isn't called out specifically. AI note takers have exploded in popularity in the US.

bottlepalm

How many times have you guys been in a meeting, not realized someone turned on AI notes, and said things you would rather have not been recorded and auto-emailed to everyone after the meeting? For me it's happened more than a few times and while maybe there's a silver lining of people hearing the unvarnished truth, I think it's going to change the dynamics of meetings, in that people are not talking honestly anymore, you have to put on a show for the AI note taker.

RobotToaster

There's some irony how, in an article like this, the phrase "recorders that use A.I. to log live interactions have become a product category." is linked to an article on the best AI note takers...

1vuio0pswjnm7

Alternative to archive.is No Javascript, no CAPTCHA, no geoblocking, no DDoS directed at blog https://static.nytimes.com/narrated-articles/synthetic/artic...

roysting

Frankly, at the very least any entity that receives any kind of public money and/or benefits, including any and all corporations, should be required as part of their receipt of public money or benefits of any kind, including legal protections, i.e., limited liability, to record ever single conversation anyone has in the executive level where all the horrible decisions are made, the plundering is done, and the current de facto immunity from prosecution for crimes is enjoyed. If you receive even just limited legal liability protections ... you are receiving a public benefit and you should be required to record every single conversation, including if you involve your personal devices, every single personal conversation you had on your personal devices of any kind, short of reporting accidental contamination. It seems people are way too ok with all the abuse and criminality of our politicians and executives at all levels and accountability really needs to be reintroduced into the system. Or are we simply going to wait for a coulee more Luigi events and the ruling class then just dropping the mask on the prison system surveillance state they have constructed around even the USA? But I realize that is probably wishful thinking because it seems we long crossed the threshold of accountability, where the citizens had enough power to actually affect a requirement that all meetings and communications of any and all politicians, bureaucrats, and executives be recorded and even made public in most cases.

properbrew

I think tools like this are needed but the current default of "random SaaS bot joins every call and uploads the whole thing somewhere" feels like the worst possible version of it. The whole point should be that the people in the meeting can actually focus on the conversation rather than half listening while trying to write down enough notes to remember it later. If you're paying people good money to be in a meeting, having them spend half of it doing low quality note taking is a bit mad. This is basically the reason I've been building Whistle Enterprise ( https://whistle-enterprise.com ). I'd much rather have something where I choose to record a meeting, process it locally, generate the document and then decide what to keep or delete. I mean yea, it still creates a record so it doesn't solve the legal / discovery side, but at least you're not also adding a random third party into the middle of every conversation.