Is the meeting bot silently recording your morning stand-up also quietly building your next legal headache?
As many companies embrace AI-powered transcription tools and auto-recording bots for convenience and productivity, they may be overlooking a far more serious risk: legal liability.
The concern is simple but significant: any recorded meeting — and their transcripts — can be requested in legal proceedings, sometimes years later. Once something is recorded and stored, it becomes potentially discoverable in court. This turns every casual meeting, internal debate, or product planning session into a potential liability.
In the rush to automate, transcribe, and archive every conversation, many companies are overlooking the legal implications. And while privacy and data protection have dominated the conversation around meeting bots, the real compliance issue may lie elsewhere: in litigation disclosure, discovery obligations, and long-term data retention risks. Not to mention the risk of insider information disclosure for listed companies.
This is not just a theoretical concern. In both the US and UK, courts can — and do — compel the disclosure of internal communications, including recordings and transcripts. And once produced, a single offhand comment can become the centrepiece of a damaging lawsuit.
The compliance challenge isn’t encryption. It’s exposure.
The real risk isn’t privacy. It’s litigation.
For years, the meeting bot industry has been solving for privacy anxiety: encryption, access controls, GDPR compliance, SOC 2.
But they’ve missed the actual corporate threat: legal discovery.
Everything your team says in a meeting recording; every joke, every offhand comment, every bit of bad judgment, is now on record. Forever. Searchable. Transcribable. Subpoena-able.
And once it’s on record, you can’t un-record it.
Imagine this:
Three years from now, your company is under investigation. Maybe a class action, maybe a whistleblower report, maybe a regulatory investigation.
Your lawyers receive a subpoena or a disclosure request:
“All communications relating to Product X between 2023 and 2025, including recordings, notes, and transcriptions.”
And then opposing counsel finds this gem in a sales team stand-up:
“Honestly, this product probably won’t work. But marketing says we just need a strong Q4 push and we’ll be fine.”
Congratulations. That one offhand remark is now Exhibit A in a lawsuit.
You don’t get to explain that it was “just internal brainstorming” or that “we pivoted six months later.” In discovery, context is a luxury.
US legal considerations: Welcome to the land of eDiscovery
In the United States, civil litigation is governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), particularly Rule 26 and Rule 34, which compel parties to disclose all relevant evidence, including digital recordings and transcripts.
And US courts take a broad view of what’s “discoverable.” If it’s relevant, it’s fair game. If it’s reasonably likely to contain relevant information? Still fair game.
In Zubulake v. UBS Warburg (2004), a landmark case in eDiscovery, the court made it crystal clear: emails, backup tapes, metadata, chat logs and meeting recordings were all discoverable. Moreover, companies are responsible for preserving this data once litigation is reasonably anticipated. Failing to do so could result in sanctions.
UK legal considerations: Disclosure still bites
In the UK, civil disclosure rules under the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), Part 31, are less expansive than in the US — but still very real.
Litigants must disclose any document “which adversely affects his own case or another party’s case or supports another party’s case.” The court decides what’s relevant, and that includes audio and video.
In R (Citizens UK) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018], even internal meeting notes and emails were required. There’s no reason a Teams bot transcript or Otter recording wouldn’t qualify.
UK courts don’t do fishing expeditions like in the US. But if your recording is relevant there is a very real chance it’s going in front of a judge.
Real-world examples of meeting data in litigation
Uber’s trade secrets case (Waymo v Uber) hinged on internal communications and recorded meetings. Notes from leadership sessions became evidence of bad faith and corporate intent.
Boeing’s 737 Max litigation uncovered internal chat logs and meeting summaries where employees ridiculed regulators and discussed hiding issues. The recordings weren’t as central as the tone was.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen provided meeting transcripts as part of her evidence to Congress. These weren’t leaks. They were records.
Cross-border exposure: The multinational meeting trap
For global companies, the legal risks of meeting recordings multiply fast, especially when employees in one jurisdiction are unaware of the discovery obligations in another.
Consider this scenario: A UK-based product manager at a global tech company openly discusses regulatory uncertainty, technical debt, or commercial risks during a recorded team meeting. The meeting bot transcribes everything. Months or years later, the company becomes the target of a US class action or SEC investigation. Under US discovery rules, that recording, including comments made by UK staff, can be requested, reviewed, and used as evidence.
US courts don’t care that the meeting took place in London. If the parent company is subject to US jurisdiction, so is the data.
This creates a compliance blind spot: employees in low-litigation cultures like the UK or EU may feel more comfortable being candid in meetings. But in doing so, they may inadvertently create discoverable records under far more aggressive US litigation rules.
The compliance challenge:
UK and EU employees may not be trained on US eDiscovery risks. They assume GDPR or local norms offer protection which is not always the case.
Local data protection teams focus on storage and consent, not litigation exposure.
Global policies on meeting recordings are often inconsistent, leaving room for discretion that creates risk.
Insider information: A compliance minefield in every transcript
Beyond general legal liability, meeting recordings present a serious risk around the handling and exposure of insider information for listed companies, financial institutions, and firms handling market-sensitive data.
Insider information, under both UK and US law, refers to material non-public information that could influence an investor’s decision if made public. Recording internal meetings where such information is discussed such as future earnings forecasts, M&A activity, product launches, regulatory decisions, creates a permanent, retrievable record of that sensitive content.
If access to these recordings isn’t tightly controlled, or if an employee later leaks or trades on that information, the company could face serious regulatory scrutiny or prosecution for market abuse or insider trading offences.
In the UK, this falls under the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR), which requires firms to take all reasonable steps to prevent the unlawful disclosure of inside information. Recording and storing transcripts of meetings containing such information increases the risk of unintentional disclosure — whether through misconfigured access controls, data breaches, or even internal whistleblowing.
In the US, the Securities Exchange Act and SEC Rule 10b-5 govern insider trading enforcement. Recorded discussions about financial performance, strategic decisions, or material risks could be scrutinised in investigations or used to establish intent and knowledge in enforcement actions.
Real-world implications:
A CFO casually mentions missing revenue targets during an internal call. Months later, that recording resurfaces during an SEC probe into suspicious trading activity by a junior employee who had access to the call transcript.
A product team discusses unannounced features or partnerships. The transcript ends up on a shared drive. A third party accesses it, shares it, or trades on it.
During M&A discussions, internal alignment meetings are recorded “for internal reference.” If the deal leaks, those recordings can become part of a regulatory or criminal investigation.
In all these cases, the recording didn’t create the misconduct, but it made proving it, and possibly prosecuting it, significantly easier.
Compliance takeaway: If your meetings involve material non-public information, recording them doesn’t just increase convenience, it potentially increases regulatory exposure and criminal liability. Firms should clearly classify insider-risk meetings as non-recordable, implement access controls for all recordings, and embed this into their MAR compliance and training programmes.
Otherwise, meeting attendees or those with access to the recording may need to be added to the insider information lists.
Compliance teams, take note
Meeting bots are not a theoretical risk but an operational one. Every recorded call, every transcript, every AI-generated summary becomes discoverable evidence. That means:
- HR issues: Offhand discriminatory comments on a “casual” Zoom.
- Sales tactics: Promises made in customer calls that contradict contracts.
- Product risks: Engineers admitting flaws during backlog grooming.
- Strategy leaks: Execs talking acquisitions in recorded leadership meetings.
If it’s on the record, it should be on the risk register.
What can you do?
Ban auto-recordings by default. Opt-in only with legal justification and proper governance.
Implement a data retention policy. If you must record, purge regularly. Don’t keep what you don’t need.
Train your teams. People must understand that “recorded” means “potential evidence.”
Audit your meeting platforms. Who’s recording? Who’s storing? Where is it going?
Involve legal early. If you’re evaluating meeting bots, bring in the legal department before IT and security.
