We’ve always recognized the odiousness of one party surreptitiously recording a conversation. Even though perfectly legal in New York, it may be unethical for an attorney to record. I have always told my professional responsibility students that if it got around that you had secretly recorded just one conversation, even if for good reason, you wouldn’t be trusted by anyone to not have the “juke box” turned on when they spoke to you.
I must admit, as a prosecutor in the good old days when entrance security at government buildings wasn’t very robust especially in detecting recording devices, we were constantly on guard lest the “bad guys” or their sometimes sleazy lawyers memorialize some silly remark by a prosecutor or agent that they could eventually use to undermine a prosecution.
