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Notary
Verifies who people are and whether they understand what they sign, witnesses signatures, and in civil-law countries drafts and keeps deeds such as property sales, wills and company documents. The paperwork is going digital by law: Spain keeps every deed in an electronic register and Japan makes notarial deeds electronic by default, and Spain's notaries use AI to extract data from common deeds with human checks. Signing remotely is allowed but narrow: in two years Spanish notaries authorised more than 12,700 acts by video against more than 14 million deeds in the electronic register, and Japan allows web meetings only when the notary judges them appropriate. Checking identity and capacity, and drafting, stay with the notary; France's notaries have only begun an AI pilot.
Look up which acts your jurisdiction allows to be notarised remotely and how identity must be checked.
This is not a probability of losing your job. It combines how much of the role's task load is exposed to automation with how far adoption has actually gone — useful for comparing occupations on one consistent basis, and for nothing else.
Written for civil-law notaries, who draft and authenticate deeds, and for notaries public, who mainly verify identity and witness signatures; drafting applies to the first only. Lawyers and paralegals have their own pages. The evidence is Spain's law on notarial digitalisation and its notaries' figures and AI project, France's notaries' AI pilot and Japan's law on electronic notarial deeds; most of it comes from notaries' own bodies and from civil-law countries, and it establishes how notarial records and signing are changing and what stays with the notary, not how notaries' numbers or incomes have changed.
What is actually changing#
The unit of analysis is the task, not the job title. A role is not replaced — its task mix shifts.
Each tile is one task. Its size is how much of the job it is; its colour is where the task is heading. Click a tile to see what the judgement does not establish.
One country's rule; it does not measure how identity checks are done in practice or how often they fail.
Two countries, and figures reported by the notaries' own body; video signing is a change of channel, not automation.
The absence of a record and one pilot; it does not measure whether drafting tools are already used inside notarial offices.
Two countries' laws and one notarial body's project; they do not show how much clerical work in notarial offices has changed.
Is this your job? Say so and this page narrows to your share of it.
A job title is a bundle of tasks bought together, and no two people hold the same bundle. Nothing is sent anywhere — it stays in this browser.
Read all 4 tasks in full — direction, reasoning and limits →
Recent changes#
France. The notaries' higher council says the solution it is deploying will let notaries and their staff become familiar with and experiment with AI in their daily work, in an 18-month partnership; notaries remain free to use the tools or not. Its president says AI will change part of notaries' working methods but neither their missions nor the guarantees they provide. An optional programme with no results reported yet.
Small-scale trial in a real setting. Tells us the deployment conditions are being tested, not that they hold — so one pilot is never enough on its own; two independent ones are.
Spain. The notaries' general council says that from November 2023 to November 2025 notaries authorised more than 12,700 acts by videoconference and 14,690,000 electronic notarial protocols, and that the electronic protocols are stored encrypted at the council, accessible only to the notary who holds each one. The profession's own body reporting on itself; it does not state a ratio between the two figures.
An employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
Spain. The notaries' council says it has automated the extraction of data from the seven most frequent types of deed with 96 percent average accuracy, and that human review remains indispensable in every automated process; it expected to handle 26 deed types by June 2025. Data extraction for the profession's central index after deeds are signed, not drafting; the council is reporting on its own system.
An employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
Japan. The ministry says the 2023 law, enacted on 6 June and promulgated on 14 June 2023, lets procedures before a notary use a web meeting when the party wishes and the notary considers it appropriate, and makes the original of a notarial deed electronic data in principle; these provisions took effect on 1 October 2025. A law that opens a remote channel at the notary's discretion and moves records to electronic form; it gives no counts.
Failure, rollback, regulation or cost is suppressing adoption. Can lower an assessment or widen its uncertainty.
Spain. The law lets notaries authorise by videoconference only the acts it lists and says general or preventive powers of attorney cannot be authorised that way; in every case the notary will verify the identification documents sent by the party and may, with consent, check them against the Interior Ministry's databases, and must refuse to act when the conditions of the notarial law are missing. Every deed's original is also mirrored in an electronic protocol held under the notary's authority. A law that widens remote signing within limits and keeps the checks with the notary.
Failure, rollback, regulation or cost is suppressing adoption. Can lower an assessment or widen its uncertainty.
What this means for you#
If you are starting out, expect records, copies and data extraction to be electronic and partly automated, and some signings to happen by video. Build what the law keeps with the notary: judging identity and capacity, explaining documents, and drafting.
Expect less clerical record work and more electronic channels. Advising, drafting and the duty to refuse stay with you.
Your options#
Four directions, each with its real constraints and one thing you can test this week. Continuing as you are is a legitimate choice — it just has to be a chosen one.
Learn your country's electronic notarial procedures
Spain and Japan now keep notarial deeds electronically by law and allow some signings by video under strict conditions.
Rules differ by country and change, and remote procedures are limited to specific acts.
Look up which acts your jurisdiction allows to be notarised remotely and how identity must be checked.
Stay in advice and drafting
No record shows AI drafting deeds in production, and the law keeps the duty to verify and to refuse with the notary.
Drafting is the work of civil-law notaries; a notary public usually may not give legal advice.
List which of your tasks last month were advice or drafting and which were records and copies.
Move into anti-money-laundering and compliance work
Notaries carry anti-money-laundering duties, and digital records make that checking work larger and more data-driven.
Compliance roles need specific training and often sit in notarial bodies or firms rather than offices.
Find out what anti-money-laundering checks your notarial body requires and who carries them out.
Common questions#
Not on present evidence. Notarial records are going electronic by law and AI extracts data from deeds, but the law keeps identity checks, explaining documents and the duty to refuse with the notary, and remote signing is allowed only for limited acts.
We do not answer that with a number of years. Watch whether your country widens the list of acts that can be signed remotely, and whether notarial bodies move AI from data extraction into drafting. Those tell you more than any date.
In some countries, for some acts. Spain allows video authorisation for a closed list of acts but not general powers of attorney, and Japan allows web meetings only when the notary judges them appropriate.
No. A notary public, as in the US, mainly verifies identity and witnesses signatures; a civil-law notary, as in Spain, France, Germany or Japan, is a legal professional who drafts and authenticates deeds. On this page, drafting applies only to civil-law notaries.
What these judgements rest on#
3 of 4 task judgements on this page are backed by a verified event and 1 are platform inference, each labelled where it appears. Behind them sit 2 technology dimensions, a reconstructed trajectory since language models reached the public, and 5 verified events.
See which technologies, how it got here, and the method →
Where it sits in the official classification: skills, knowledge, related jobs →
Other roles in the same function#
A company divides its work into functions before it divides it into jobs. These sit in Legal & compliance alongside this one — a fact about org charts, not a judgement that they are similar or that they are changing in the same direction.
Lawyer · Paralegal · Court reporter · Judge / magistrate · Compliance officer