Tota is a dictation app for Mac that transcribes attendance notes, advice letters and client emails entirely on your Mac, so privileged material is never sent to a server, read by a vendor, or retained by a third party.
You have just come off a forty-minute call with a client about a dispute that has not been filed yet. The attendance note needs writing while it is fresh, and the one tool that would make that painless wants to upload the call's substance to someone else's cloud. Tota does the same job on the Mac in front of you: press a shortcut, talk, and the note appears in Word, Outlook, or your practice-management system's note field, with nothing transmitted anywhere.
Why cloud dictation is an awkward fit for privileged work
Most modern dictation apps are cloud services. Your voice goes to the vendor's servers, is transcribed there, and often passes through a third-party AI provider on the way back. Each vendor publishes a privacy policy, a retention period, and sometimes a SOC 2 report. Those are promises about what happens to your client's words after they leave your control.
Privilege and confidentiality do not have an exception for brief processing on a vendor's infrastructure. Most firms have resolved this by either banning dictation apps outright or routing them through procurement, risk assessments and a data-processing agreement for a £10-a-month utility. On-device dictation removes the question instead of answering it: if the audio and the text never leave the Mac, there is nothing for a third party to hold, train on, subpoena or leak.
That is the design choice behind Tota. There is no Tota server that processes content. The speech model, the formatting model and the speaker-identification model all run on your Mac, and the app works with Wi-Fi switched off.
What lawyers actually dictate
- Attendance notes. The call or meeting record, written immediately afterwards and pasted into the matter file.
- Letters of advice and emails. First drafts in Word or Outlook that you would rather talk through than type.
- Time narratives. The six-minute entries that pile up at the end of the day and get written vaguely because typing them is tedious.
- Comments on drafts. Markup notes and instructions to trainees or counsel, dictated straight into the comment field.
- File notes after hearings and negotiations. Longer, structured notes where Smart Formatting's paragraphing and list handling earn their keep.
- Transcripts of recorded consultations. Where you have consent to record, Audio Drop turns the recording into a speaker-labelled transcript without uploading it.
What leaves your Mac, and what doesn't
This is the whole list. Every row is checkable from the app's own behaviour, and the security page explains how to watch its network activity yourself.
| Data | Leaves your Mac? | What actually happens |
|---|---|---|
| Your voice while dictating client matters | No | Recorded to a temporary file, transcribed on your Mac by Whisper via WhisperKit, then deleted. |
| The transcript | No | Typed into the app you are using. Kept in a local history for three days, then archived as Markdown in a folder you choose. Entries can be deleted. |
| Text on your screen | No | With “Spell what’s on your screen” on, the visible text of the window you are dictating into is read once, to bias spelling. Never stored or sent. Can be turned off. |
| Glossary terms and learned corrections | No | Stored as JSON files in Tota’s folder in Application Support. |
| Smart Formatting | No | Runs a local Qwen 3 language model via MLX. Off by default. |
| Audio files dropped in for transcription | No | Transcribed and speaker-labelled on your Mac. |
| Licence key and a machine identifier | Yes | Sent to api.lemonsqueezy.com at activation and validation. Never any content. |
| Update check | Yes | A download request to github.com at launch. Can be disabled in Settings. |
| Model downloads | Yes, one-way | Speech, formatting and speaker-ID model files from huggingface.co, once, on first use. |
| Usage analytics or crash reports | Never | There is no analytics or crash-reporting SDK in the app. |
How Tota works for lawyers
Install the app, grant it microphone and accessibility access, and press Cmd+Shift+R wherever your cursor is. Tota records until you press it again, transcribes the audio on your Mac with OpenAI's Whisper model running through WhisperKit, and types the result into the field. There is also a hold-to-talk key for short entries and a “Hey Tota” wake word for hands-free use. It behaves like a keyboard, so it works in browser-based systems, Word, email, Notes and anything else with a text field, with no integration to request from IT. After the one-time model download it needs no internet at all.
Three optional layers sit on top. Smart Formatting runs a small local language model that fixes punctuation, turns “new paragraph” and “new list” into structure, and corrects stutters without rewriting what you meant. The auto-learning dictionary remembers the corrections you make. And Audio Drop transcribes audio files you already have, with automatic speaker labels, also on-device.
Workflows for a law practice
- The post-call attendance note. Open the matter, put the cursor in the note field, press the shortcut and talk for three minutes. Tota types the note where the cursor is. With Smart Formatting on, 'new paragraph' and 'new list' become structure.
- The advice letter draft. Dictate the substance into a Word document, then edit on screen. Tota's auto-learning dictionary picks up your corrections, so a client name you fix once is spelled correctly next time.
- Time recording. A time-entry narrative is one sentence. Dictating it into the practice-management system's narrative field takes less time than deciding what to type.
- Working without Wi-Fi. In court buildings, on trains and in client offices with no guest network, dictation keeps working because nothing needs a connection.
A glossary for lawyers
Legal dictation fails on names and terms of art more than on ordinary English. A Tota glossary is a short list of terms that the speech model is nudged towards while it transcribes, with sound-alike matching afterwards for anything it still mishears. A glossary for a litigation practice might hold:
- client and counterparty names
- without prejudice
- inter alia
- prima facie
- res judicata
- indemnity
- counterparty
- Companies Act 2006
- CPR Part 36
- disclosure
- undertaking
- the names of judges and opposing solicitors
Keep it focused: the live hint has room for roughly 70 to 90 words, and a meter in the app shows how much you have used. Different practice areas can have different glossaries, and Tota can switch glossary automatically by app, so the list you use in Outlook can differ from the one you use in Word.
The glossaries guide covers set-up, the hint budget and per-app switching.
What Tota does not do
- It is not a document-management or legal-hold system. Tota types text where your cursor is. The matter file, retention and legal hold remain the job of your practice-management software.
- It does not record calls. Tota transcribes your own dictation. Recording a client call needs the client's consent and a separate recording tool; Tota's Audio Drop can transcribe the resulting file on-device.
- It has no compliance certification. Tota is not SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audited and does not offer a data-processing agreement, because there is no Tota server that processes your content. Your firm's own device policy, FileVault and backup rules are what govern the transcripts on the Mac.
- Transcripts are files on your Mac. Nothing is synced or backed up by Tota. FileVault, your backup tool and your device policy are what protect them.
Pricing for a law practice
Tota is a one-time purchase of £19.99, with two seats per licence, after a 14-day free trial of every feature. There is no subscription, no per-minute transcription fee and no word limit, because local processing costs us nothing per word. Larger teams buy additional licences. Pricing is the same worldwide; see the pricing section for what the licence includes.
Frequently asked questions
Does any client material leave my Mac when I dictate with Tota?
No. Audio is transcribed on your Mac by OpenAI's Whisper model running through WhisperKit, the transcript is typed into the app you are using, and no audio, text or screen content is sent to any server. The only network calls the app makes are a licence check, an update check and one-time model downloads, none of which carry content.
Is dictating with a cloud app a breach of legal privilege?
That is a question for your firm's risk team, and the honest answer is that it depends on the vendor's terms and your regulator. The point of on-device dictation is that you do not need to ask it: the client's words are never disclosed to a third party in the first place.
Does Tota work with Clio, Word, Outlook and practice-management systems?
Yes. Tota is system-wide dictation: it types into whichever text field has the cursor, including browser-based practice-management systems, Word, Outlook, Apple Mail and Notes. There is no per-app integration to install.
Can I transcribe a recorded client consultation?
If you have consent to record, drop the audio file (MP3, M4A, WAV and others) onto Tota's Audio Drop. It produces a transcript with automatic speaker labels and timestamps, processed entirely on your Mac, and exports to text, Markdown, SRT, JSON or CSV.
Where are my transcripts stored?
In a local history on your Mac for three days, then archived as plain Markdown files in a folder you choose. Entries can be deleted at any time. The files are ordinary files on your Mac, covered by FileVault and your firm's device policy, and nothing syncs them anywhere.
Is Tota SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA certified?
No. Those audits certify how a vendor's servers handle your data. Tota has no server that handles your data, so there is nothing to audit. The security page lists every network call the app can make, and you can verify it yourself with a tool like Little Snitch.
How much does it cost per fee-earner?
£19.99 once, with two seats per licence, after a 14-day free trial. There is no subscription, no word limit and no per-month fee to justify to the practice manager.
Keep privileged work on the Mac it was dictated on
Download Tota, turn Wi-Fi off if you like, and dictate the next attendance note. Two seats, £19.99 once.
14-day free trial · macOS 14 or later · No account needed
