Recording court proceedings used to be something only the court did. His Honour Judge Nicholas Rimmer, sitting in the Crown Court at Southwark, has now granted a joint application by all six counsel in a trial to use a personal recording device “solely for the purpose of trial work and preparation”. Transcription is allowed on strict terms. The ruling was reported by the specialist criminal law service Crimeline and then by Legal Futures on 28 September.
The judge called the decision “something of a leap into uncharted territory”. Counsel wanted to stop writing out the live evidence by hand, so that they were free to follow witnesses and the technical exhibits as the evidence was given and still have an accurate note for later preparation. He accepted that aim, and said that better note-taking was likely to improve productivity and the accuracy of submissions about the evidence.
The conditions the court imposed
The permission came with conditions, and they are the part of the ruling that matters beyond this one trial. The device was to record sound and produce a transcript on the device itself, with no internet connection. Nobody was to share the recordings, and each one had to be deleted as soon as practicable once the trial ended. Each barrister gave an assurance of registration as a data processor handling other people's data in line with the GDPR.
For anyone who wanted an outside service, the judge named Plaud.ai as the only one the court had been able to assess for security. He specified the level of encryption expected, barred storage of the recording in the cloud, required deletion from the service straight after use, and ruled out any use of the recording to train a large language model.
Why the court allowed it
The judge said pointedly that the arrangement was needed only because the Crown Court does not offer reliable instant daily transcripts to professional court users, as courts in Australia do. He said the court welcomes the day when accurate automated daily transcripts reach every professional user. Until then, counsel will fill the gap with their own tools.
This is one ruling by one circuit judge, and it binds nobody else. Section 9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 still makes it a contempt to record sound in court without leave, so the ruling gives no general permission. Every advocate who wants to record has to ask the judge in that case.
What your firm should do now
If your solicitor advocates or the counsel you instruct want to record a hearing, make the application at the outset and put forward conditions of your own on the lines this judge set. A court will find it easier to grant a request that already answers its concerns. Never let anyone press record on the strength of this report alone.
Then look again at the note-takers and dictation tools your firm uses away from court. The judge’s terms give you a test that any supplier should pass, covering where the audio is processed, whether it reaches the cloud, how fast it is deleted and whether it can train a model. A tool that fails any of those in a courtroom deserves the same doubt in a client meeting, where the material is often more sensitive.
The ruling itself sits with Crimeline, which is written for criminal practitioners and keeps much of its material for subscribers. Legal Futures quotes the conditions at length and is free to read without registration.
If you want your firm’s recording and transcription tools tested against terms like these before a judge or a client asks, start with a conversation.
