Notary and Commissioner Services Editing and Proofreading Services

Somebody arrives with a document, a passport and an assumption. They believe you are going to confirm that what the document says is true. You are not — you are going to confirm that they signed it in front of you, or that a copy matches an original, and those are entirely different things. Most of the difficulty in this work comes from the gap between what a notarised document proves and what people think it proves.

We edit what notaries, commissioners for oaths and certification services produce — explanations of what can and cannot be certified, identification and evidence requirements for clients, appointment preparation information and document checklists, fee schedules and their basis, apostille and legalisation process explanations, statutory declaration and affidavit guidance, certified copy and true copy documentation, translation and interpreter requirement information, capacity and duress considerations documentation, and client-facing explanations of the notary's role. Our editors work on the gap between what people expect and what a certificate says.

The explanation of what is being certified is the piece of writing this work most needs, and its failure is a service list. A client who books a notary appointment for a document to be "notarised" has booked something they cannot define. We write these so the distinction is stated first — that the notary certifies the signature, the identity or the fidelity of a copy, and does not certify that the contents are true — since a client who understands this arrives with the right document and the right expectations; so the identification requirement is stated as a list of specific documents with what is and is not accepted, given that a wasted appointment is almost always an identification problem and it is entirely preventable; so what the client must bring is listed by document type, because the requirements for a property power of attorney, a company document and a personal declaration are different and a single generic list produces three wasted appointments; so the onward process is explained where the document is going abroad, with the apostille and any consular step, its cost and its realistic duration, as clients routinely believe the notary's stamp is the end; so the situations where the notary must decline are named, covering capacity concerns, apparent duress, a document the client has not read and any document the notary is asked to backdate; so the fee basis is stated with what a typical matter costs; and so the client is told what to do if they are not sure whether they need a notary at all. Explanations written this way prevent the wasted journey.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client documents and correspondence. We are editors rather than notaries or legal advisers, and we offer no view on certification, legalisation or capacity. What we can do is close the gap between what the client expects and what the certificate says.