Is it legal to record client calls?

Every few weeks someone asks me some version of this: "I want to use a notetaker on my client calls — am I actually allowed to?" It's a fair question, and it got louder in 2025 when a wave of lawsuits hit Otter.ai. I record client calls myself, so I've had to think it through. Here's what I've worked out.

One important caveat first: I'm a consultant who happens to build a meeting-notes app. I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Recording law varies by country, by US state, and by situation, and it changes over time. Treat this as a map of the terrain — then check your own specifics with a professional.

The short, honest answer

In most places, yes — recording a call you're part of is legal if the other people know and agree. Consent is the one thing that keeps you safe everywhere. There's no jurisdiction where getting everyone's clear agreement makes things worse, and plenty where it's the difference between legal and criminal. So the practical rule is simple: assume you need consent and ask for it.

Covert recording is a different story, and I'd never suggest it. Even where the law might technically permit it, secretly recording a client is the kind of thing that ends the relationship.

The US rules, in plain English

US law works on two levels. Federally, the baseline is one-party consent: under 18 U.S.C. § 2511, recording is legal as long as at least one party to the conversation consents — and if you're on the call, that party can be you.

But states can be stricter, and about a dozen are. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which keeps a state-by-state guide, the states that generally require all parties to consent include California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Several more are mixed in ways that trip people up — Connecticut and Nevada lean toward all-party consent for phone calls but not in-person conversations, while Missouri and Oregon flip that. Because the details shift, I lean on RCFP's guide rather than memorising a list.

The wrinkle that catches consultants: calls cross state lines constantly. When participants sit in different states, RCFP's advice is to assume the stricter state's law applies — so if anyone might be in an all-party state, treat the whole call as all-party. Cautious, and the simplest rule to actually follow.

And "one-party consent" doesn't mean "you don't have to tell them" — only that the law doesn't require it. Whether you tell them is a separate, and easier, question.

The EU and GDPR (and where Norway fits)

Europe frames this differently. Recording a call captures people's voices and words, which is personal data, so recording is processing under the GDPR. That means you need a lawful basis — most often either consent or "legitimate interests" — plus transparency obligations on top. The UK's ICO and privacy practitioners writing for the IAPP make the same point: whatever basis you rely on, you must be transparent — people have to know the recording is happening, why, and how to object.

I'm Norwegian, and Norway is a case people get wrong. We're not in the EU — but we're in the EEA, and the Norwegian Data Protection Authority confirms the GDPR was folded into the EEA agreement and has applied here since 20 July 2018. So recording someone in Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein falls under GDPR just as it does in Germany or France. "They're not in the EU" is not an exemption.

The Otter.ai lawsuit, and why it matters

This all became mainstream because of Otter.ai. As NPR reported, a class action accused the company of secretly recording private work conversations. Several suits were consolidated into In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation (No. 5:25-cv-06911) in the Northern District of California. As the National Law Review summarises, the complaints allege Otter recorded non-participants who never consented, and used people's conversations to train its machine-learning models — under wiretapping law, California's privacy act, and Illinois's biometric statute.

To be careful: these are allegations in ongoing litigation, not proven facts, and Otter has denied wrongdoing. But it's a useful warning even before any ruling.

What I actually say on a call

My whole compliance process is one sentence, spoken at the top of every call: "I use an AI tool to take notes for me — is it okay if I record this so I don't miss anything?" Then I wait for a yes.

That's it. It satisfies consent in one-party and all-party states alike, it satisfies the GDPR's "tell people" duty, and — the part people underrate — clients almost always appreciate being asked. What starts as a legal safeguard turns out to be good client relations: something legally optional in one-party states is still professionally right everywhere.

Consent is one question. What happens next is another.

Here's the split the Otter case makes vivid. Consent is about whether you may record at all. What happens to the recording afterwards — where the audio lives, who can read it, whether it trains someone's AI — is a separate privacy question. You can have consent and still create risk if the recording flows off to a third party's servers.

This is the one place my own bias shows, so I'll keep it brief. I built Humla to be local-first for exactly this reason: it records your own Mac with no bot joining the call, and it can transcribe and summarise entirely on your device, so a confidential conversation doesn't have to leave your machine. To be clear, that does not exempt you from getting consent — nothing does. It just means that once you have consent, the recording stays yours.

Not legal advice — really

I'll say it again because it matters: I'm not a lawyer, and your situation may have wrinkles I can't see — regulated industries, recording employees, cross-border calls, court use. If anything here touches a real decision, get advice from a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction. But the one thing to take away is the easy one: ask first. It's legal cover and good manners in the same short sentence.