By
Adam Simmons
· Last checked
October 2026
Notes get written well without recordings because the note was never a transcript. It is a short clinical document with a purpose — what was worked on, what you observed, what your reasoning was, what happens next — and none of those come out of a recording anyway. They come out of your head, which is where the reasoning lives.
What makes notes slow is almost never memory. It is starting from a blank page, writing them in a batch on Friday, and trying to make each one read like an essay. Structure fixes the first, timing fixes the second, and accepting that a good note is short fixes the third.
There is also a reason to prefer not recording that has nothing to do with convenience. A recording is itself part of the record, with everything that follows — consent, storage, retention, access requests, and a breach surface that a written note doesn't have. Not creating it is often the simpler and safer posture, and it is one you can explain in a sentence.
What actually makes notes fast?
A structure you don't have to invent each time. SOAP, DAP, or whatever your profession uses. The value isn't the acronym; it's that four labelled boxes are faster to fill than an empty page, and they stop you writing a narrative nobody needs.
Writing them immediately. The note that takes four minutes at 2:51 takes twenty at nine o'clock on Friday, because at nine o'clock on Friday you're reconstructing rather than recording. Ten minutes between sessions is the single highest-return scheduling decision available.
Writing less. Most notes are longer than they need to be. Interventions used, response, risk, plan. A note is a professional record, not a transcript of the hour.
Capturing during, not only after. Two or three words on a scratch pad during the session — a phrase the client used, a shift you noticed, something to follow up — carry the whole note later. This is not the same as writing the note during the session, and it takes about four seconds.
Can I write notes during the session?
Some practitioners do, and it works when it's visible and explained.
The failure mode is a therapist typing at a client, eyes elsewhere, while the client talks about something difficult. Clients read that accurately as divided attention.
What works better: say what you're doing the first time — "I make brief notes during our sessions, and I'll tell you what I'm writing if you ever want to know" — and then keep it brief. On video, a practitioner who suddenly looks down and starts typing is more conspicuous than in person, not less, because your face is the entire frame.
For most people the better arrangement is a few words during, and the note itself in the ten minutes after.
What about the ten minutes?
If your schedule has no gap between sessions, notes will always be a backlog, and the backlog will always be written from memory that has degraded.
The arithmetic is worth doing honestly. Six back-to-back sessions and an hour of notes afterwards is the same total time as six sessions with ten-minute gaps, except that in the first version the notes are worse and the day ends with an hour of admin. Most practitioners who switch don't go back.
Doesn't a recording make the note more accurate?
More detailed, not more accurate — and detail is not what a clinical note is for.
The parts of a note that carry weight are the parts that were never said out loud: your clinical reasoning, your risk judgement, what you decided and why. A transcript contains none of that. It contains everything the client said, including the things that don't belong in a record.
There's a second effect worth naming. A note built from a transcript tends to be longer and more literal, and a longer record is a larger disclosure if it is ever requested. Everything in the chart can be read by someone else later.
What if I genuinely can't remember?
It happens, particularly late in a full day, and it is a scheduling problem rather than a memory problem.
Three things that help without recording anything:
Write the first line before the client is fully gone. Even one sentence anchors the rest.
Keep a running list of what you meant to follow up. Half of what you're trying to recall is "what were we going to do next," and that can be captured in three words at the time.
Note the gap honestly if there is one. A note that says what you can document is better than one padded with plausible reconstruction.
What should I tell clients?
If you don't record, it is worth saying so once, because a growing number of clients now assume that everything is being recorded and processed by something.
One line in your intake covers it: sessions aren't recorded, notes are written by you, and here is where those notes are kept. Clients who have been worrying about it silently — and there are more of them than you'd think — often visibly relax.
If you do record, that is a consent conversation rather than a disclosure, and what your College expects of you there is worth confirming with your College directly rather than from a summary.
The short version
Structure, ten minutes, and fewer words. A note is your reasoning, not a recollection of the conversation, and the reasoning was never on the tape anyway. Not recording is also one less thing to consent for, store, retain and one day hand over.
About Rivet
Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.
$29 CAD a month per practitioner for the practice line, or $65 with video sessions and clinical tools. Fourteen-day trial, no card.