Recording a session in Florida.

The statute Florida Statutes section 934.03

Chapter 934 is Florida's security of communications law and section 934.03 makes it an offence to intercept an oral communication without the consent of all parties. Florida defines an oral communication as one uttered by a person who expects it not to be intercepted, in circumstances justifying that expectation, which a paid session behind a closed door plainly is. The offence is a third degree felony for a first deliberate breach, and the chapter also gives the person recorded a civil claim of their own. Consent has to be genuine rather than buried, and Florida courts have refused to find it in a term nobody was pointed at.

Because the criminal penalty is real, Florida is the state where a practitioner most wants the agreement on the recording rather than in a drawer. Ask, wait, and let the client answer in their own voice. If a client says no, take written notes and upload those instead; nothing in this product requires audio.

Florida's privacy statute is unusually narrow: it binds controllers making more than a billion dollars in global revenue and meeting one of three further tests, so almost no independent practice and almost no agency is inside it. What does apply is Florida's breach notification law, which covers a recording or transcript holding a named person's data, and the ordinary duty of care an unhappy client will argue for.