Do you need everyone's consent to record a meeting?

In 12 US states, yes — from every person on the call. Here's the list, the exceptions, and why an invisible notetaker doesn't change the answer.

Short answer: the US splits into one-party and all-party consent. In most states you may record a conversation you're part of. In 12 states every participant must consent. And when participants sit in different states, the safe assumption is that the strictest rule applies.

The 12 all-party consent states

Every other state, plus federal law, follows one-party consent: if you're in the conversation, your own consent is enough. Each state above has its own page with the statute, penalties and case law.

Three things that trip people up

1. “All-party consent” often isn't about consent

Read the twelve statutes and the label frays. Massachusetts, Montana and Washington turn on secrecy — record openly, with everyone aware, and there's no violation even if nobody says “yes.” Oregon asks only that in-person participants be informed. And the count itself is contested: Michigan's statute reads as all-party but courts have recognised a participant exception since Sullivan v. Gray (1982), left intact when the state Supreme Court declined a certified question in 2021 — so it appears on some lists and not others.

2. Mixed-state calls: the strictest rule is advice, not a hard law

A Zoom with someone in Texas (one-party) and someone in California (all-party) is not a one-party call. There's no settled rule that the strictest state automatically wins — Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney (Cal. 2006) got there through a fact-specific choice-of-law analysis, not a blanket principle. But complying with the strictest jurisdiction on the call is the right conservative habit, because the alternative is arguing choice-of-law after the fact.

3. Your profession may be stricter than your state

HIPAA, attorney-client privilege, and professional bodies for therapists and clinicians impose duties that sit on top of recording law. A recording can be perfectly lawful under state law and still breach your professional obligations — including obligations about where the recording is stored, and who processes it.

Does an invisible notetaker change anything?

No — and this is the point worth internalising. Tools that capture your device's audio, including Oats, produce no visible participant. That removes a disclosure cue. It does not remove a legal duty. If you needed consent with a bot in the room, you need it without one.

What no-bot tooling actually changes is the awkwardness. Instead of a robot appearing and someone asking what it is, you say the sentence yourself, in your own words, at the top of the call.

A script that works

It works because it answers the two questions people actually have — what is it and where does it go — before they have to ask. Get an audible yes, and note that you got it.

If you're using a cloud notetaker, be accurate: the recording does go to a third party, and in regulated contexts that vendor may need to be disclosed as a sub-processor. Choosing a tool that processes locally is partly a way of making the honest sentence a short one.

Sources: Recording Law: two-party consent states, US recording laws by state. Laws change; this page reflects July 2026.