DAP, BIRP, or SOAP: choosing a therapy note format

Most therapists learn one note format in grad school and stick with it out of habit, not because anyone compared the options. The three formats you'll run into most often, SOAP, DAP, and BIRP, were built for different things. Picking the wrong one for your setting makes every note take longer than it needs to.

SOAP: built for shared care

Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan. SOAP came out of medicine, and it shows: the "Objective" section assumes there's something measurable to record, vitals, test results, observed behavior. In a therapy context, that section usually becomes mental status observations. SOAP is the format most group practices default to because it's the one other providers on a care team already know how to read.

DAP: built for individual talk therapy

Data, Assessment, Plan. DAP drops the split between subjective and objective and just asks what happened in the session, what you made of it, and what's next. It's faster to write because there's one less section to divide content between, which is probably why it's become the default for solo practitioners doing straightforward individual sessions.

BIRP: built for treatment-plan-linked documentation

Behavior, Intervention, Response, Plan. BIRP ties each note back to the behaviors named in a client's treatment plan and documents how they responded to a specific intervention that session. It's the format most often required by insurers and agencies that audit for medical necessity, since it makes the link between "here's the problem" and "here's what we did about it" explicit.

So which one should you use?

• Group practice or shared EHR: SOAP, so notes read consistently across providers.
• Solo private practice, straightforward caseload: DAP, for speed.
• Insurance-audited or agency setting: BIRP, because it documents medical necessity directly.

None of this has to be a one-time decision you're locked into. AI Scribe for Therapists drafts in whichever format you tell it to, including a template you've built yourself, so switching formats between clients or contexts doesn't mean rebuilding your workflow.