folo for lawyers & legal teams
Last updated: July 2026
Use cases › Lawyers & legal teams
A conversation with a client is among the most protected things a lawyer handles — and an AI notetaker that quietly ships it to a vendor is a new way to put that protection at risk. This page looks honestly at what changes when you select folo’s local transcription and summary backends instead. It is not legal advice, and on-device software cannot promise your communications stay privileged — that turns on the law and the facts of each matter. But which backend receives meeting content is something you can control globally in Settings.
The third party in the room
The classic rule is blunt: attorney–client privilege can be lost when a third party is privy to the communication. A cloud notetaker is, functionally, that third party — it sends the audio to a vendor, transcribes and summarizes it on the vendor’s servers, and stores the result in the vendor’s cloud, sometimes under terms that permit analytics or model training. Bar associations and firms — the ABA, state and city bars — have flagged exactly this as a confidentiality and competence problem.
To be clear about what folo does and doesn’t do: whether any given tool waives privilege in your matter is a legal question for you and your firm, and nothing here answers it. Selecting local backends can do a narrower, concrete thing — process audio and summaries on your Mac. ElevenLabs receives audio only when selected globally. For cloud summaries, folo sends transcript text directly to Anthropic using the stored API key, or the locally installed Claude CLI sends it using its separate CLI authentication. Keeping transcripts off other people’s servers covers the reasoning in detail.
Discovery and retention
A cloud notetaker doesn’t just risk confidentiality — it manufactures a new record. It creates a detailed, time-stamped transcript that would not otherwise exist, stored on someone else’s infrastructure and typically retained until someone manually deletes it. For a privileged or sensitive matter, that is a discoverable artifact and an expanded surface of exposure, sitting outside your control.
With folo, recording and speaker recognition happen on your Mac, while the globally selected transcription and summary backends determine whether audio or transcript text is sent to a provider. folo’s own files live on your disk, so you decide local retention — how long they are kept and when they are deleted — rather than inheriting an app-hosted archive.
The safer default is local
Where bar and firm guidance has landed is consistent: restrict AI in privileged contexts, and where you do use it, deploy it locally or within firm-controlled infrastructure rather than a consumer cloud service. folo is local by default. Apple Intelligence, Ollama and Local MLX process summaries locally. folo sends transcript text directly to Anthropic using the stored API key, or the locally installed Claude CLI sends it to Anthropic using its separate CLI authentication.
Said honestly: this is a technical control, not an ethics opinion or a guarantee. It reduces where your client’s words travel; it does not resolve your professional obligations, your engagement terms, or the privilege analysis itself. Those remain yours.
Consent and disclosure still apply
Keeping a transcript on your own machine protects it from third parties; it does not settle your duties to the people in the meeting. Recording law still governs — around a dozen US states require all-party consent, and GDPR generally treats a recording as personal data needing a lawful basis. Firms increasingly address AI recording, consent and review expectations directly in the engagement letter.
On-device changes none of that. The workable habit is the same as it has always been: disclose that you’re recording, note it where it belongs, and let people opt out. This is not legal advice, and the specifics depend on your jurisdiction and your client.
Where folo fits — and where it doesn’t
folo is Mac-only and single-user, and it needs to be running during the meeting. It is not a matter-management system, an eDiscovery platform, or a shared firm repository, and it makes no claim to be. If your workflow needs multi-user collaboration or centralized firm storage, folo isn’t that tool. With a local transcription backend selected, it creates an on-device transcript of a client meeting; local summary backends keep summary processing on the Mac too. Private meeting notes and recording a call without a bot go further, and again — none of this is legal advice.
Questions, answered
Does folo make my client meetings privileged?
No — it can’t, and it doesn’t claim to. Whether a communication is privileged is a legal question that turns on the law and the facts of your matter. With a local transcription backend selected, folo performs that processing on your Mac. This is not legal advice.
Why are cloud notetakers a concern for legal work?
They put a third-party vendor in possession of the conversation — the classic route to a privilege waiver — and they create time-stamped transcripts that are retained on the vendor’s servers, potentially used to train models, and discoverable. Bar guidance has repeatedly flagged these risks.
Can summaries run without sending anything to the cloud?
Yes. Select a local transcription backend and Apple Intelligence, Ollama or Local MLX for summaries in global Settings. Claude Code is not local-only: its local CLI sends transcript text to Anthropic and handles authentication separately from folo.
Do I still need consent to record?
Yes. On-device keeps the audio away from third parties, but disclosure and consent obligations remain — all-party-consent states require it outright, GDPR generally does too, and many firms address it in the engagement letter. This is not legal advice.