Understanding California's 2023 Notary Public Handbook (Part 1)

Since 2013, I had been looking (on and off) into the idea of becoming a notary public. My education had been in Library Science, and specifically Archives. I got to work as an intern not only at the Wisconsin State Historical Society, but also at the National Archives and Records Administration in Boston. That's a lot of records, required a decent amount of research and an immeasurable amount of reading. Not just reading to learn the "how" of doing the job, but as an archivist, you need to understand the records you're working with in order to group them and organize them in a way that can be understood by researchers later on.

We see the "attention to detail" and "detail oriented" so often in job descriptions it is almost meaningless. Who's going to highlight that they are a forgetful individual or that they often miss important pieces of information. For both an archivist and a notary, attention to detail is an extremely important skill. I would even argue that it is more crucial for a notary to pay attention to the details than it is for an archivist. Oftentimes, an archivist can go back and check their work. Notaries are usually working on an appointment basis and documents are often submitted to an agency not long after the notarization process. There is not much room to correct an error.

The California Notary Public Handbook is a tool that is published annually by the Secretary of State. In 2023, the California Secretary of State is Dr. Shirley N. Weber. It provides the official source of laws relating to the notaries of California. The following are the notes of a notarial student in regards to this book, working towards earning the commission.

Note 1: A Timeline

One of the first notes I have is highlighting the section with a timeline.

Once the commission has been issued, a person has 30 calendar days from the beginning of the term prescribed in the commission to take, subscribe, and file an oath of office and file a $15,00 surety bond with the county clerk's office.

There were 2 things that particularly stood out to me here. In all of my research on the National Notary Association (NNA) website and the dozens of videos I had watched on YouTube, this was the FIRST I had seen about there being a deadline of any sort. As I had already been looking at prices of classes (prior to that, there was the frustrations of the search for a provider for notary classes), I noted that many had package options and was evaluating the packages. Learning about the 30 day deadline was what solidified my decision to opt for a package with the surety bond and the Errors and Omissions (E&O) insurance. Having the classes bundled with these other required expenses helps to streamline the application process.

The second thing that I immediately looked up was the addresses of the county clerk offices in my county. If I was only going to have 30 days (and in my case, there will be a major national holiday during that time) to accomplish this, I needed to be ready to hit the ground running, if not just go straight from the test site to the office. I have 4 available options, but I do want to check again to see if there are ones closer to my confirmed test site.

Note 2: Location

The second highlighted section states:

A notary public can provide notarial services throughout the State of California. A notary public is not limited to providing services only in the county in where the oath and bond are on file.

I was pleasantly surprised by this. I appreciated the clarity. On further thought, I realized that in many states, there are many counties with a small population. This would make obtaining notary signatures and stamps when needed more difficult with a severely limited amount of options. As part of the notaries duties, a major cornerstone is that they are to be a neutral third party. Many times, small town politics and even larger locations, having multiple options for notaries would be a necessity.

Note 3: Government Code

My notes indicate that the California Government Code sections 8200-8230 are the sections that address notaries public. The first date mentioned is July 1, 2005 which indicates that "a six-hour course of study approved by the Secretary of State" will need to be "satisfactorily completed." This seems to fall along the same timeline of Michael Closen's interview for his book, Notary Best Practices and the statements he makes about the amount of information that previous was not available;

The two of us [his research assistant and himself] together over some time did some research and found there was very little written at the time about notary law, notary ethics, notary best practices.

This discovery was about "25-30 years ago" (c.1989-1994) when this gap was brought to his attention.

My note is to find and read this government code. It wasn't until I reached the end of the Handbook that I realized the pertinent parts of the code were included at the end. However, I'm finding that resources such as EasyLawLookUp.com exist and can be much more efficient at finding definitions and related content, but I also recognize the immense value in having this readily available in the Handbook.

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This is the end of Part 1 of a multi-part series of articles on my notes and impressions of the California 2023 Notary Public Handbook.

Part 2 can be found here: Understanding California's 2023 Notary Public Handbook (Part 2)

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