I Record Every Sales Call
I've recorded hundreds of sales calls over the past year. Every discovery call, every demo, every closing conversation. Captured and reviewed so I can actually get better instead of guessing how things went.
Is it legal? Yes. And honestly, it's one of the best things I've done for my sales performance. I review my talk-to-listen ratio after calls. I catch objections I missed in the moment. I prep sharper follow-ups because I'm working from what actually happened, not what I think happened. I use Convo for all of this. It processes audio locally on my device, no bot joins the meeting, and nobody on the other end knows it's there. From a legal standpoint, it's basically the same as taking notes on what I hear.
But I didn't always know the rules. About six months ago, a prospect in California mentioned that their legal team was looking into whether their vendors' sales call recording tools complied with state wiretapping laws. That one comment sent me down a rabbit hole. Not into whether I should record. The value of recording my calls is too clear to give up. But I wanted to make sure I was doing it in a way that kept me on the right side of every state's laws.
Here's what I found.
The Short Answer
Is it illegal to record someone without their permission? In most cases, no. As long as you're a participant in the conversation, you're fine.
Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2511) sets what's called one-party consent as the baseline. That means one person on the call consents to the recording (you), and that's legally enough. Violating federal wiretapping law can carry up to five years in prison and civil liability, but the standard itself is simple: if you're on the call, you can record it.
39 states follow this same standard. If you're a participant, you can record without telling anyone.
11 states are different. They require all-party consent, meaning every person on the call has to agree. If you record a conversation with someone in one of those states without telling them, you could face criminal charges, civil damages starting at $1,000, and attorney's fees on top of that.
The 11 States You Need to Know
These are the two-party (all-party) consent states. If anyone on your call is in one of these, everyone needs to consent:
| State | Key Detail |
|---|---|
| California | Most aggressive enforcement. Has claimed jurisdiction over interstate calls, so if one party is in California, their law may apply no matter where you're calling from |
| Delaware | All-party consent for both phone and in-person |
| Florida | Felony violation. All parties must consent |
| Illinois | Strict enforcement history, especially around biometric data and recording |
| Maryland | All-party consent. Courts have applied this broadly |
| Massachusetts | All-party consent. One of the stricter enforcement states |
| Montana | All-party consent, though enforcement tends to be less aggressive |
| Nevada | All-party consent required |
| New Hampshire | All-party consent. Felony violation |
| Pennsylvania | All-party consent. Felony with penalties up to 7 years |
| Washington | All-party consent. Felony violation |
The other 37 states plus DC follow one-party consent. If you're in Texas and the other person is in New York, you can record. Your consent is enough.
For a full state-by-state breakdown, the Justia 50-state recording law survey and the Reporters Committee recording guide are the best resources out there.
Virtual Meetings Make This Trickier
Here's where it gets messy if you're doing remote sales or any kind of client work.
When you're on a video call with people in multiple states, the general rule is that the strictest law applies. So if you're in New York (one-party) talking to a prospect in California (all-party), California's standard probably governs.
California has been especially aggressive here. Courts have pulled jurisdiction over interstate calls just because one participant was in California. Where you are doesn't matter. Where they are does.
Think about what that means for a typical remote sales team. You're on a Zoom call with six people in four states. Is anyone in a two-party consent state? Do you even know where everyone's dialing in from? If you're running calls on Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, the honest answer is usually no.
So the practical move is either get consent upfront or use a recording method that doesn't create the legal exposure in the first place. I went with the second option.
Why How You Record Matters
Most guides about recording laws focus entirely on where you record. But how you record changes the legal picture just as much. This is the thing that clicked for me when I was researching this.
Bot-based tools
Fireflies, Otter, Gong, and most other meeting recorders work by sending a bot into your meeting. "Fireflies.ai Notetaker" shows up as a participant, records the audio, and uploads it to their cloud servers.
Legally, that's a third party intercepting the conversation. The bot isn't a participant. It's an outside entity capturing and transmitting your audio. In two-party consent states, that's exactly the kind of thing wiretapping statutes were written to cover.
And this isn't just a theoretical risk. Fireflies got hit with a class-action BIPA lawsuit in December 2025. The allegation was that voiceprint data was collected without written consent. Otter got sued in August 2025 for similar reasons. Even the fact that these bots are visible in the participant list doesn't automatically mean everyone consented. Seeing a bot pop up is not the same thing as affirmatively agreeing to be recorded.
Local audio processing
This is how I actually record my calls, and the legal difference is real.
Convo captures audio from my device's own audio output. The same audio my headphones are already playing. Everything gets processed locally on my Mac. No bot joins the meeting. No audio gets uploaded anywhere. No third party touches the conversation.
Legally, this is much closer to just taking notes on a conversation you're part of. You're processing what you hear, on your own device, for your own use. There's no third party intercepting anything. The conversation doesn't leave your machine. No voiceprint data ends up on someone else's servers. And there's no bot to trigger consent questions in the first place.
That's why I use Convo for all my sales call recording. I get real-time coaching during calls, I can review my conversation metrics after, and I don't have to think about whether a bot joining the call just created a legal issue with a prospect in Pennsylvania. My co-founder Markus and I actually built Convo with this exact problem in mind. We wanted call recording and real-time help without the legal baggage that comes with bot-based tools. If you want a more detailed look at how this compares to the bot approach, I wrote a Convo vs Fireflies breakdown.
How I Stay Compliant
Here's what I actually do on every call:
1. Check where people are. Before I record, I look at where the other participants are based. If anyone's in one of the 11 all-party consent states, I adjust.
2. When in doubt, just say something. For calls with prospects in two-party consent states, I'll say "I'm going to take notes using an AI tool, is that cool?" Takes five seconds. Nobody has ever said no. And because Convo doesn't drop a bot into the meeting, there's no weird "what's that Fireflies thing?" moment to explain.
3. Keep it local. I use Convo because the audio stays on my device. No third party joins, nothing gets uploaded. That alone eliminates most of the legal gray area.
4. Don't record calls you're not on. This is where it's clearly illegal everywhere. Federal law and every state law agree: intercepting a conversation you're not part of is a crime. Full stop.
5. Know what your tool is doing. If your recording tool sends a bot into meetings and uploads audio to cloud servers, that's a third party entering the conversation. That's a different legal situation than processing audio on your own machine. Worth understanding, especially if your prospects are spread across different states.
For more on running professional calls while recording, check out our virtual meeting etiquette guide. We also have platform-specific recording guides for Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it illegal to record someone without their permission? In most of the US, no, as long as you're a participant in the conversation. Federal law and 39 states follow one-party consent, meaning your own consent is enough. But 11 states (California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington) require all-party consent. In those states, recording without everyone's knowledge can be a criminal offense with penalties ranging from misdemeanors to felonies.
Can I legally record a work meeting without telling anyone? In one-party consent states, yes. You're a participant, so your consent is sufficient. In all-party consent states, you need to tell everyone. For virtual meetings where participants are in different states, the strictest law generally applies. The safest approach is to either disclose or use a local processing tool that doesn't involve a third party intercepting the conversation.
Is recording a Zoom call legal? Recording a Zoom call is legal in one-party consent states as long as you're a participant. The legal question has more to do with where your participants are and how you're recording than with which platform you're on. Bot-based tools that join as third-party participants create different legal exposure than local audio processing tools that just capture what you hear on your own device.
What's the difference between one-party and two-party consent? One-party consent means one person in the conversation (including you) needs to agree to the recording. Two-party (or all-party) consent means everyone has to agree. Federal law sets one-party consent as the baseline, but 11 states have stricter requirements. When participants are in different states, the strictest law generally applies.
Can I get sued for recording a sales call? Yes. In all-party consent states, recording without consent can lead to both criminal charges and civil lawsuits. Civil damages typically start at $1,000 per violation plus attorney's fees. Several AI meeting tools have already been sued over their recording practices. Fireflies was sued under Illinois' BIPA in December 2025, and Otter was sued in August 2025 (Brewer v. Otter.ai).
What's the safest way to record business calls? Use a tool that processes audio locally on your device instead of sending a bot into the meeting. Tell people when they're in all-party consent states. Don't record conversations you're not part of. And know where your participants are before you hit record. Tools like Convo that capture audio locally without joining as a meeting participant give you full call recording capabilities without the legal complexity of bot-based recording.