Over the past few months, lawyers around the world have had
to adjust how they practice their profession, and legislatures and the judiciary
have had to adapt to make access to the legal system as safe as possible.
Historically, documents that needed notarization required
the notary to be present in the same room as the signer. In recent months, acting
under 26
V.S.A. § 5364, the Vermont Secretary
of State has adopted Emergency
Rules permitting remote notarization. The law provides lawyers and the
public with a vital tool in this age of social distancing. Remote notarization
allows notaries and clients to accomplish this task from their own homes.
The process can seem intimidating, but with a simple set of
procedures in place it is easy to adapt to doing notarizations remotely.
However, there are two critical things to note about the law:
Location is Vital
Both the notary and the signer need to be physically present
within the State of Vermont for the notarization to be valid. If you are travelling out of state, then you
cannot remotely notarize something for someone in state. Nor can a client who is traveling out-of-state
request that you remotely notarize something for them. They would need to seek a notary licensed in
the state in which they were present.
Remote Notarizations Must be Recorded
The statute that authorizes remote notarization procedures
requires that notarization be done via a videoconferencing tool like Zoom, and
that the entire session be recorded. The
recording must then be kept on file by the notary for seven years.
Most, if not all, of the standard videoconferencing apps
allow for easy recording of a session.
It is helpful to do a few trial runs with whatever program you will be
using so that you have the flow of setting up the conference, recording it, and
saving it. This makes things much less
stressful when you do your first remote notarization as it gives you a chance
to try to work out any possible bugs in the system.
Our Remote Notarization Procedures
We have developed a simple set of procedures to follow to
make this process easier for all of our notaries. These procedures satisfy both critical
requirements noted above. Sample remote
notarization certificate language can be found in the Emergency
Rules.
- The Notary must be physically present in Vermont
- Have the person mail or email an exact copy of the document that they need notarized to you
- If emailed, print out before the conference call so that you have the physical copy in hand for the call
- Set up a video conference call with the person who needs something notarized
- Be sure to inform your client that in order to do remote notarization the conference will need to be recorded and that recording will be retained on file by your office for at least 7 years as required by law
- Make sure your video conference is set up to record and record the entire call – web cameras may need to be adjusted to get the actual signing on screen and recorded
- When the call begins, verify the signer’s identity
- If you have personal knowledge and can attest to the identity of the person, then say so
- If you do not have personal knowledge of the person, then you should verify the person’s identity with two different forms of identification
- You can also rely on the attestation of a credible witness
- Once you have verified the identity of the signer, verify that the document you have in front of you is the same as the document they will be signing
- Have the signer adjust their camera so that you can see them signing the document easily and then have the sign the document
- Once they have done so, adjust your camera so that it can fully see you signing the document
- Complete the Certification for Remote Acknowledgement (sample language for this Certificate can be found on pages 4 and 5 of the Rules)
- Save a copy of the recording and keep it on file for at least 7 years
The coronavirus pandemic has changed much for our practice, but we can still provide critical services to our clients without endangering ourselves or our clients. Remote notarization is just one tool that we can add to our skillset to provide the best services we can during these unusual times.
Our Legislature could make life easier for litigators by adopting the Uniform Unsworn Declarations Act.
Rich
Many thanks to my Associate, Amanda Lee, for doing the
research and preparing a near final draft of this post!