Having qualified as a solicitor at Allen & Overy, my experience has always been in the commercial world. I then spent eight years in private practice with commercial firms in Hong Kong. While I was in Hong Kong, I became a notary. On returning to the UK, I qualified as a notary here as well.
For the last six years, I have practised as a notary public, to the exclusion of any other legal field, as it is my experience that notary work has now become a specialist area of law where expertise is needed.
To substantiate this point, a notary could be negligent if he did not advise the client on whether or not the document also needed to be legalised, either by an apostille being attached by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to the document and/or a certificate being attached by the particular country’s consulate. For example, US states generally do not require legalising but four major US states do unless it has been waived. The document could be sent back by the receiving party abroad if it needed to be legalised, which is just what the client does not want.
The mandatory consulate requirements for legalising are arcane. China will accept payment by a solicitor’s cheque, while Brazil formerly required payment by giro slip, but now requires payment by postal order. The United Arab Emirates requires payment by bankers’ draft, while Chile requires payment direct into its bank account at HSBC. And so on, with the requirements regularly changing.
Furthermore, I do not see how anyone, other than an experienced solicitor, can become a notary. However, non-solicitors at the moment can practise as notaries.
A notary usually obtains instructions over the telephone. He has to be able to identify a vast array of documents from what his caller tells him. This is usually at short notice as the witnessing of documents or obtaining of certified copies is often left to the last minute.