Notarization is the process of authenticating a document by a notary public, a public officer who witnesses the signing of a document and verifies the identity of the signer. Notarization is often required for legal or financial transactions, and can help prevent fraud by providing an independent third-party verification of the authenticity of the document.

There are many types of documents that are commonly notarized, including:

Real estate documents: When buying or selling a property, it is common for documents such as deeds, mortgages, and titles to be notarized. This helps to ensure that the transaction is legally valid and can help prevent disputes over ownership of the property.

Financial documents: Financial documents such as loans, contracts, and power of attorney documents are often notarized to protect the interests of all parties involved. For example, a mortgage document may be notarized to confirm that the borrower has signed the document willingly and understands the terms of the loan.

Legal documents: Many legal documents, such as trusts, affidavits, and health care directives require notarization to be legally binding. This helps to prevent fraud and ensures that the document was signed willingly and with proper understanding of the terms.

Travel documents: Some travel documents, such as passport and visa requests, may require notarization to confirm the identity of the applicant and prevent fraud.

Business documents: Business documents, such as contracts and agreements, may be notarized to protect the interests of all parties involved and ensure that the terms of the document are legally binding.

In general, any document that requires legal or financial transactions or that involves the transfer of money or property may be notarized. It is important to consult with a legal professional or the appropriate government agency to determine if a document needs to be notarized and how to properly notarize it.

Frequently I hear the same question being asked by new notaries and notaries who want to take their business to the next level, what is the one thing that I can do to get more customers? The answer is often overlooked, telephone etiquette. The telephone is one of the most important and commonly used tools in business. Multitudes of businesses, companies, and individuals use telephones in their work every day; however, most of us don’t think of the telephone as a tool, and as a result, inadvertently misuse it. The telephone is a link between us and the world outside our business. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t pay attention or make a conscious effort to monitor what kind of message we are sending to our callers and the outside world. Below are some tips to help you use this invaluable tool to your advantage.

Some basic rules of telephone etiquette are. . .

• Always try to answer your phone whenever possible
• Always practice answering your phone within 3 rings
• DO NOT eat or chew gum while talking on the phone
• DO NOT carry on a conversation with another person while on the phone
• Always be courteous and professional
• Always make the other person feel important
• Manage expectations, be honest and don’t over-promise or under-deliver
• Project a positive, enthusiastic, and friendly attitude
• Appreciate a person’s time and respect it as valuable

When Answering the telephone. . .

• Smile when answering the phone (callers can “hear” your smile)
• Use a friendly greeting, “Good morning” or “Good afternoon”
• Be polite, “Thank you for calling My Mobile Notary Business”
• Identify yourself, “‘This is Matt speaking”
• Offer assistance, “How can I help you?”
• Stay positive, be considerate, show interest, and care

While Speaking with Customers on the telephone. . .

• Speak directly into the mouthpiece of your phone or a headset while talking
• Be polite and kind (use phrases like, Please and Thank You)
• Listen without interrupting
• Word distinction should be clear and easy to understand; enunciate your words
• Control your rate of speech; do not speak too fast
• Respond with appropriate emotion
• Avoid being condescending, even if you are asked silly questions
• Use the other person's name often, people like to hear their name
• Take time with everyone and do not rush someone off the phone
• Offer referrals when you can’t help, don’t just say no
• Who should hang up first? Let the person calling hang up first

When you can’t answer the telephone. . .

• Avoid using the "system greeting"; record a personal greeting and keep your message up-to-date
• Make sure your voicemail greeting is clear, effective, and friendly
• Do not repeat yourself (state information one time)
• Keep greetings as brief and concise as possible
• Give the caller options “You may also send a text or visit my website for more info”
• At the end of the message, thank the caller for reaching out and tell them when they can expect your return call
• Keep your voicemail box empty (Check your voicemail often and return calls promptly, even when you can’t help)

When returning a Telephone call. . .

• Prepare yourself. Visualize your caller as a friendly, positive person
• Assume what questions or objections you may encounter before placing the call and have answers ready
• State your objectives upfront to identify the information you need to obtain from the conversation
• Take mental notes during the call
• Specify any follow-up action to the caller
• State the action you will take
• Thank them for calling and say “Good-bye”

Proper Telephone Language. . .

• Ask don’t tell, “I am having a little difficulty hearing you. Can you please speak up?”
• Refrain from using slurs, slang, or phrases, such as, “bye-bye,” “Okie-Dokie,” or, “Alrighty”
• Don’t begin sentences with phrases like, “You have to-,” You need to-“, or, “Why didn’t you?”
• Never refer to a matter as, “Your problem” or “Your issue”
• Identify inquiries as, “Your question,” “Your concern,” or, “This situation”
• Never reply with remarks like, “I can’t do that” or, “that’s not my job”

The telephone is a critical element to success. Initial contact with your customers is most frequently made through a telephone call. Your customers are the reason your business exists and the telephone is the main link to your customers. Your role in answering the phone is vital in satisfying customer needs, delivering the highest quality of service, and building your business every day.

One of the first things you may choose to do once you pass the California Bar Examination is to attend a swearing-in ceremony where large groups of attorneys take the attorney oath at the same time. Taking the oath is not just a ritual, it is required for admission to practice law in the state of California.  But due to the COVID-19 pandemic and in an effort to keep everyone safe, all swearing-in ceremonies have been cancelled. However, there are a number of officials in California who are authorized to administer the oath, including Notaries!

If you passed the California Bar Exam, congratulations! If you have met all other requirements, you are now ready to take the attorney's oath. You will soon receive more details about your State Bar license and how to proceed with enrollment. Once you have received your oath package, you are ready to be sworn-in. To do so, please make sure you have filled out your oath card completely. Next, schedule your swearing in ceremony here. A commissioned, bonded and insured California Notary Public will come to you at your location, swear you in and, sign your oath card which can then be mailed to the CA State Bar Association specifically to the address on the card.

That’s it! It’s that easy. Don’t wait and see if swearing in ceremonies resume later this year, take your oath now and get ahead of the pack! To find a mobile notary in your area, search “mobile notary services” and your city and state.

Getting your documents Notarized isn’t always easy in the most normal of times but now with a global pandemic and rolling shelter in place orders, you might think it’s impossible. With businesses closed, offices working from home, and shortened hours at the local bank branch, obtaining notary services is a new challenge. Enter the Mobile Notary.

Mobile Notaries are available in most every city today. They are a traveling Notary Public who travels to their clients upon request. Typically you call, email, or book an appointment on the notary’s website and the mobile notary shows up at your location at a time that is convenient for you. A mobile notary goes anywhere from one to ten places per day to notarize a single signature on a single document, or notarize multiple signatures on multiple documents, and provide other services such as fingerprinting at any particular stop. In the era of social distancing, mobile notaries are meeting customers in their garages, patios, porches, curbside, even in public parks and other outdoor spaces to help keep everyone safe.

Mobile Notaries not only offer traditional notarization services but also a wide range of other helpful services. Most mobile notaries can print documents before your appointment and deliver them, ship documents onto their final destination, obtain Apostille Services for documents going overseas, provide fingerprinting services, and much, much more. In some states, a Notary Public can even come to your home and officiate a marriage.

To find a mobile notary in your area, simply do a web search for “mobile notary” and your city and state names. Tell the notary that you choose what kinds of documents you need notarized and if there are any other services such as those listed above that the notary can perform for you. Mobile notaries typically charge a state-mandated fee for each signature notarized and a travel fee to cover the costs of getting to you. Some notaries even offer a discount or a package rate when you have multiple documents being notarized.

Whether you are sheltering in place, working from home, or simply need something notarized and don’t want to drive to the local copy shop, call your local mobile notary and get the services you need to your door.

It’s spring break and you are taking your children to Mexico to visit the Aztec Ruins in Mexico City. Dad is at work in his office, as usual. You and the kids wait an hour to get through customs at the airport only to be told you can’t enter Mexico. You didn’t bring the necessary documents.

What should have you brought with you:
• Passport for yourself. If no passport, then a current driver’s license and certified copy of your birth certificate.
• Passports for your kids if they have them. If not, then state-issued identification cards or driver’s licenses. Additionally, certified copies of their birth certificates to show nationality.
• A letter written by your husband telling border control that you have his permission to take the children out of the county without him. This letter must be notarized.

These documents will be necessary to get back into the US as well.

These rules apply to grandparents and friends of children, too. Grandparents would have to get a notarized letter signed by both parents. If you take someone else’s child along with your children, you just get a notarized letter signed by both of the child’s parents. If the parents are divorced, the non-accompanying legal parent or guardian must sign.

For example: Underage daughter lives with Mom who has divorced the child’s father. mom and daughter want to go to Mexico with Mom’s new husband. The original father did not sign away parental rights to the new husband nor did the new husband legally adopt the child. Mom’s ex-husband would have to provide a notarized letter of permission for his daughter to leave the US without him.

You can get a certified copy of your child’s birth certificate by calling the courthouse of your birth county. They will direct you to the proper office. The courthouse fee is usually just twenty dollars or so.

To find a mobile notary in you area, do an internet search with the words “mobile notary services” and the names of your city and state.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact Matt Miller, owner of Matt Miller Mobile Notary
(415) 448-7343 or matt@mmmobilenotary.net
Or visit www.mmmobilenotary.net

Here we cover six important reasons for NOT using Remote Online Notarization.

We're living in an era driven by technological advancements. Today, people are willing to use YouTube as a babysitter and tablets as their kids' companions. Be it engaging games, interactive tools for education or workflow productivity, Technology always lends a helping hand but this gives rise to a few questions: Does technology really help us? Does technology need to disrupt everything? How deep into our personal affairs should we let technology creep?

Far Less Secure than In-Person

Lack of personal appearance defeats the purpose of notarization. Period. How can a notary properly identify someone in the world of AI when they appear on a computer screen? Audio/Video can be made from anywhere through any means. As I write this article, I did a simple Google search for "Deepfake Video" and about 152 Million results popped up with detailed instructions.

Huge Potential for Fraud

Here's the dirty secret that online notaries don't want you to know. Online notary companies require you to upload a copy of your documents so that they can place their seal on them, you then download your "notarized" documents and print them out. But guess what? Now a copy of your most important legal documents is now somewhere on the online notary platform’s data warehouse just waiting for a hacker to harvest them. And we all hear the same news story almost weekly, "XYZ Company has been hacked and millions of users sensitive data was compromised."

Huge Potential for Identity Theft

Internet security is another big one. If you don't have huge secure data servers processing the data you're uploading to the online notary platform, your personal information including your ID credentials and legal documents are being thrown out onto the World Wide Web without recourse. Once that data is internet bound, there is no coming back from a potential cyber attack.

It Costs More

In the State of California, notaries may charge a fee of $15 per signature notarized. Online notaries charge almost twice that at $25 per signature notarized. If you have multiple documents with multiple signers, you're going to spend a whole lot more with an online notary than with a local notary whom you actually get to meet in person and shake hands with. "Shop Local" also applies to notaries.

You Might Need a Do-Over

The receiving party may not accept an out of state notary seal. A little known fact is that it's up to the receiving party to decide if they will accept the notarization or not. Online notaries don’t exist in all states at the moment and the receiving party doesn't have to accept an out of state seal, particularly if the receiving party is a governmental agency. You'll then need to spend more money and time having your document re-notarized by a local notary in your home state.

Unemployment

How are local notaries supposed to make a living? Currently, there are approximately 165,000 notaries in California. Now, we have a huge corporate company coming into CA (with the infrastructure already in place) and swallowing up notary jobs leaving thousands without work. Imagine how hard it will be to find a notary once notaries have been replaced by an app but you can't get an internet connection. For the Notary, RON is very much like what the ATM was for the Bank Teller.

Conclusion

Technology has brought radical changes to our lives. But we will end up having more disadvantages than advantages if our society overuses technology. Question? Comment? Something to add? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.

Should states legalize remote online notarization with today’s ongoing issues surrounding data preservation, enforceability, liability, evidentiary access, and reliability and in doing so, potentially threaten the integrity of a key anti-fraud mechanism in our legal system?

Documents notarized traditionally have robust evidentiary value. Rather than providing similar assurances of evidentiary reliability for online notarization, this technology leaves serious issues of long-term data retention, liability, security, evidentiary reliability and accessibility, and data privacy unaddressed. Ultimately, without tackling these crucial issues, remote online notarization may be endangering the integrity of document authentication and retention practices by prioritizing short-term convenience over proven in-person fraud prevention.

The purpose of the notarial system is not efficiency. Its purpose is to help ensure the validity of signatures used to document certain vital, life-altering transactions and events, such as real estate transactions, the granting of powers of attorney, and the creation of advance health care directives. These events and transactions occur in most people’s lives at least once. And lawsuits challenging the legality of these transactions and events regularly turn to proof that a signature was, or was not, validly notarized. To make significant changes in today’s notary laws will have significant implications for our civil justice system, and should be undertaken with caution and the utmost care. The fundamental premise is that states should act cautiously in order to ensure and require that the evidentiary reliability of online notarization is at least equal to, if not better than, traditional in-person notarization.

What happens to notarized data if a notary platform were to go out of business without first securing or transferring data; if data were corrupted, or if data were lost? What happens if one of these companies goes out of business? Notarize, one of the leading platforms and supporter of RON, runs its remote online notary service on Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS provides robust backup services and is a popular option for many leading Internet companies. But what would happen if Notarize ran out of money and was unable to pay its AWS bills? Would the records of the notarizations that it facilitated disappear for good? What would litigants do if they needed records of one of these notarizations? Likewise, what would happen if AWS were hacked and data were corrupted or stolen? And what if other online notary services use systems that are less robust and simply abandoned their businesses? Our present system relies on thousands of private notaries public to safeguard and maintain their journals. But a single lost notary journal imperils the records of, at most, a few hundred transactions. How many records could be lost if one of the platform companies failed? How many transactions could that imperil? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? This could be extremely detrimental and costly for consumers and businesses all over the globe.

Ultimately, states should consider whether the present notarial system is so broken that they cannot take adequate time to ensure that this technology implements an online system that is at least if not more robust and reliable as our current system for decades to come.