Recording consent law in Illinois
Illinois requires consent to record a private conversation — but only after its original, broader law was struck down as unconstitutional and rewritten.
General information, not legal advice. Recording law turns on facts — where each person physically is, whether the exchange counts as oral or electronic, and what your profession separately requires. If the answer matters, ask a lawyer licensed in Illinois.
Short answer: Illinois (720 ILCS 5/14-2) requires all-party consent to surreptitiously record a private conversation. The current statute dates from a 2014 rewrite, after the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the previous, far broader version as unconstitutional. Violations are felonies.
At a glance
| Statute | 720 ILCS 5/14-2 (eavesdropping); 5/14-4 (penalty); 5/14-6 (civil) |
|---|---|
| Applies to | Both in-person and electronic communications |
| Criminal penalty | Felony. First offense is a Class 4 felony (1–3 years, fine up to $25,000); a Class 3 felony (2–5 years) when the person recorded is a law-enforcement officer, prosecutor or judge on duty. |
| Civil liability | Yes, under 5/14-6 — any party may sue for injunction, actual damages and punitive damages. No fixed statutory-damages figure. |
The detail that catches people out
Illinois is the cautionary tale about assuming a statute is stable. The original eavesdropping law criminalised recording almost any conversation without all-party consent, including filming on-duty police in public. In 2014 the Illinois Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutionally overbroad in People v. Clark and People v. Melongo.
The legislature rewrote it the same year. The current law has two elements: the conversation must be a “private conversation” — one a party reasonably intended to be private — and the recording must be “surreptitious.” Recording openly, or recording conversations with no reasonable expectation of privacy, falls outside it.
What this means for AI meeting notes
In Illinois, recording a private conversation secretly is a felony; recording it openly, with everyone aware, generally is not. The safe path for professional conversations is the same as everywhere else — make the recording known and get agreement.
Two things worth separating. Whether a recording bot is visible in the attendee list has no bearing on any of the above — the statute governs the recording, not how obvious your tooling is. And where the recording is processed is a different question again: Illinois law decides whether you may record at all, while your duty of confidentiality decides who may then receive it.
A tool that captures audio through your own machine and processes it locally, like Oats, removes the second problem and leaves the first entirely intact. You still need whatever consent Illinois requires.
If people are in different states
A call with someone in a one-party-consent state and someone in Illinois is not a one-party call. Standard conservative practice is to comply with the strictest rule represented on the call — get everyone's agreement, out loud, and note that you got it. See our overview of US recording consent law for the wider picture and the other all-party states.
Sources: 720 ILCS 5/14-2. People v. Clark. RCFP — Illinois. Verified July 2026. Laws change — check the primary source before relying on this.
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