Recording and consent
Recording a session in Maryland.
Every party to a private Maryland conversation has to agree before it is recorded, and a party who has not been told has not agreed. That is Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings section 10-402, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In Maryland the rule is all party.
The statute Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings section 10-402
Maryland's wiretap subtitle makes it unlawful to intercept an oral communication unless all parties have given prior consent, and Maryland's own courts have read the word prior strictly: an agreement obtained after the recording has started does not cure what was already captured. The protected communication is one carried on in circumstances where a party expects privacy, so a session on a video call from a client's spare room qualifies. Maryland is also one of the states where a breach supports both a criminal charge and a civil claim by the person recorded.
Ask before the first word of the session, not after the pleasantries, because prior in Maryland means prior. If somebody joins a call late, ask again on the recording so their agreement is captured in the same place as everybody else's.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
A parent or guardian should be asked where the client is under 18, and in Maryland that conversation is worth having once rather than every session, with the answer written down. Maryland practitioners working with a student in a family home should also remember that another member of the household walking into shot becomes a party to the conversation, and the statute asks about parties rather than about clients.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act.
Maryland's comprehensive privacy statute is one of the stricter ones in the country: it requires data collection to be reasonably necessary for the service asked for rather than merely disclosed, and it treats a failure to minimise as a breach in itself. The volume thresholds mean most single practitioners are outside it, but an agency processing a large client list should read it rather than assume the Virginia style template applies.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings section 10-402, Maryland General Assembly
- Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, Maryland General Assembly
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in Massachusetts
- Recording a session in Michigan
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.