Recording a session in Illinois.

The statute 720 ILCS 5/14-2, the Illinois eavesdropping statute

Illinois rewrote its eavesdropping statute in 2014 after its own Supreme Court struck the previous version down as too broad. What replaced it turns on whether a conversation was private, which the statute defines by the reasonable expectation of the parties, and it requires the consent of all of them before a private conversation is recorded. A paid session is private on any reading. The rewritten statute is narrower than the one it replaced, which matters for a recording made in a public place, and it is no narrower at all for a session in a room with a door.

In Illinois, get the agreement in writing as well as out loud, and keep the written one. The eavesdropping statute is satisfied by the spoken yes; the biometric statute is the one that asks for paper, and an Illinois client who has signed nothing is the one file an Illinois practitioner will wish they had.

This is the reason Illinois is the most consequential state on this list. The Act defines a voiceprint as a biometric identifier, requires written notice and a written release before one is collected, and gives the person a private right of action with damages set per violation rather than per case. A practitioner whose tool derives a voiceprint, rather than merely holding audio, is inside it. Slide Practice does not build voiceprints and does not identify speakers biometrically.