Meeting recording laws: a consent guide
This is a starting point, not legal advice. Recording laws vary by state, change over time, and depend on details — where each participant is physically located, whether the conversation is private, what kind of meeting it is — that a general article can't account for. If it matters, check the current law for your state (and everyone else's on the call) or ask a lawyer.
The federal baseline
Under the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, federal law permits recording a conversation when at least one party to it consents. If you're a participant, your own consent satisfies that — federal law alone doesn't require you to tell anyone else you're recording. States are free to set a stricter standard, and several do.
One-party vs. two-party (all-party) consent
One-party consent states let any participant record without telling the others — this covers the majority of US states, including New York, Texas and Colorado.
Two-party — more accurately, all-party — consent states require every participant to agree before a conversation is recorded. The commonly cited list includes California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. A few other states have their own variations depending on the setting (a phone call versus an in-person conversation, for instance) — this list is a starting point, not the complete or current picture, and state legislatures do amend these laws.
Practical rule of thumb, when people are calling in from different states: follow whichever state's law is stricter.
Workplace meetings
An employer can set its own policy restricting recording at work, on top of whatever state law requires. Whether a blanket ban on recording can run into US labor-law protections for discussing working conditions is a genuinely unsettled area — not something to assume either way without checking your own situation.
Video calls
Zoom, Meet and Teams typically show a banner when recording starts, which creates a reasonable argument for implied consent. In a strict all-party state, a generic platform notification may not be enough on its own — a verbal announcement at the start of the meeting, with a real chance for someone to object, is the safer standard to hold yourself to.
Outside the US
If anyone on the call is in the EU, GDPR treats a recording as personal data processing, which generally needs a clear legal basis — consent being the straightforward one — and gives the people on the call rights to access, correct or ask for deletion of that recording afterward. Canada, Australia and the UK have their own, broadly similar frameworks built around transparency rather than silence.
A simple checklist
- Say you're recording, out loud, at the start of the meeting.
- In a state (or country) that requires everyone's consent, get an actual yes — not just a platform banner nobody read.
- Check your own employer's policy before recording a work meeting.
- When people are in different states, follow the strictest law in the room.
- Keep the recording somewhere reasonably secure, and don't keep it longer than you need it.
This is exactly why Roomtone's notetaker only ever joins a Zoom, Meet or Teams call when you send it a link — every participant sees it arrive the same way they'd see any other attendee. Recording the room from your phone is even more visible: it's your own phone, sitting there, in a meeting you're already in. Neither replaces asking; both make it obvious there's something to ask about.