Get consent before you record
Get a clear yes to record before the session starts, and capture it in the audio itself. Recording-consent law varies: federal law and most US states allow one-party consent, but about 11 states require every party to agree, including California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Other countries differ. This isn't legal advice, so when you're unsure, ask and get an explicit yes before anything substantive.
There's a professional-ethics layer too. The ICF Code of Ethics asks coaches to keep the 'strictest levels of confidentiality' and to have a clear understanding about how coaching information, including recordings, is exchanged and with whom. Don't treat a recording as automatically yours to keep. Agree upfront what you'll record, why, where it lives, and when it's deleted, then note that agreement somewhere you can find it later.
One framing point on scope. The ICF defines coaching as 'partnering with Clients in a thought-provoking and creative process.' That's a client-led partnership, not clinical treatment, which is why this guide sticks to consent and confidentiality basics rather than medical-records rules. If your work is clinical, your own regulator's rules govern here, not this page.
Record so the coach and client stay separable
The recording sets the ceiling on everything downstream. For an in-person session, put a recorder close to both chairs, off any hard surface, and away from noise like vents or a coffee machine. For a video call, record each side on its own channel if the platform allows it, so you get two clean, isolated voices instead of one mixed file.
Separated audio is what makes speaker labeling reliable. When the coach and client sit on their own tracks, labeling who said what is close to automatic. With a single mixed file, expect to fix more turns by hand where you talk over each other. Either works. Separated just saves cleanup time.
Say each person's name and the date into the recording before you begin. It timestamps your consent, anchors which voice is 'Speaker 1,' and saves you re-listening later to work out who's who.
Transcribe the coaching session with an AI first pass
Typing a session out by hand is the slow path. Transcribing one hour of audio can take up to six hours of manual work. An AI first pass turns that into a few minutes of processing plus a short cleanup. The workflow is the same one behind interview transcription: base record, AI draft, then fix by hand. No need to re-teach it here.
Spend your attention where the machine struggles: names, the client's jargon or company terms, numbers said fast, and moments where you both talk at once. For coaching, most sessions want a readable, lightly-cleaned transcript rather than strict verbatim with every 'um' left in. Fillers rarely matter when the goal is notes, not discourse analysis.
Remember that a transcript is an interpretation, not a neutral capture. How you transcribe shapes how the conversation reads and what you notice in it later. Keep the timestamps so any line you're unsure about is one click from the audio.
How do you turn a session into notes and action items?
Work from the timestamped draft, not your memory. Read it once, then pull out what a coaching record needs: what the client committed to, what you agreed to follow up on, and moments worth revisiting next time. A notes-and-action-items pass over the transcript turns an hour of talk into a short, usable recap.
Tag each commitment with its timestamp so future-you can hear the exact wording behind an action item. When the recap is ready, export it to a DOCX file you can drop into the client's folder or your own session log. Keep the full transcript as the backing record.
If you take work to supervision, the same notes double as your prep, minus anything that identifies the client. More on that next.
Keep the coaching-session transcript confidential
A coaching recording is sensitive by default. Use a tool that doesn't train AI on your files, lets you delete audio after it's processed, and doesn't quietly hold on to it. Pepys never trains on your audio or transcripts, and you can auto-delete files after they're transcribed.
This lines up with the ethics codes. The ICF Code asks for the 'strictest levels of confidentiality' and compliance with data-protection law. For European coaches, the EMCC / Global Code of Ethics similarly requires agreed confidentiality and 'safe and secure maintenance of all related records and data.' Storage and deletion are part of the agreement, not an afterthought.
Removing a name isn't enough for a shareable copy. Ordinary details combine to identify people. A 5-digit ZIP, gender, and date of birth uniquely identify around 87% of Americans (Sweeney 2000). A recount on 2000 census data put it near 63% (Golle 2006). For a supervision copy, swap names for role labels, strip identifying specifics, and keep the un-redacted master somewhere access-controlled.
