The notary

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The Notary and IT

The notarial profession has always been, and continues to be, one that is more than ready to adopt new technology. It is sufficient to recall that from the 1960s on, any and all notaries' offices moved rapidly from traditional typewriters and duplicators to the most sophisticated photocopiers and PCs with large-capacity memories. The reason for notaries' particular attention to technological developments of this kind is evident. For over 2000 years the notary's job has been to create and conserve documents and to carry out the tasks connected with the documents he has written; consequently, any technology that assists in facilitating and simplifying both the creation of the document and the formalities of its use is of vital interest to the notary.

Information technology (IT) is no exception, so from its earliest days the notarial profession took advantage of the incredible possibilities it offered.

The increasing use of IT over time by notaries can be divided, in line with the development of the technology itself, into three phases.

The first was limited to the automation of the professional office and was oriented exclusively toward facilitating:

- the creation of documents by recalling repetitive clauses;

- extraction of the data contained in the document for the carrying out of required steps linked to it;

- creation of indices and bibliographies;

- management of accounting for internal and tax reporting purposes.

The second, linked to the arrival of teleprocessing, allowed the traditional notary's office, keeper, it is true, of important documents but nevertheless an island unto itself, to open up to the outside and permit the individual professional:

- to carry out the checks required of him by the law (mortgage and land registry searches etc.) directly from his office;

- to resolve any legal problem by consulting a wide variety of data bases, from the Cassation's CED to studies by the Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato (National Council of Notaries), from the Official Gazette to theoretical treatises by various authors.

The third phase was based not only on advanced telecommunications but also on the adoption of security systems and measures like digital signatures, that allow Public Administration data bases to be directly updated from the professional's office:

- single on-line registration of real estate transactions;

- on-line recording of all formal transaction data at the Companies Office.

Exactly how far IT is destined to reach is not yet known but probably in the near future the old volumes of paper documents kept in huge archives will disappear to be replaced by ... who knows what?