page_title: Civil law notary
section_title: France
hierarchical_section_title: Civil law notary / France
caption_attribution_description: English: 1400 french royal notary flourish Français&#160;: paraphe de notaire royal (1400)
context_page_description: Civil-law notaries, or Latin notaries, are agents of noncontentious private civil law who draft, take, and record instruments for private parties and are vested as public officers with the authentication power of the State. As opposed to most notaries public, their common-law counterparts, civil-law notaries are highly trained, licensed practitioners providing a range of regulated services, and whereas they hold a public office, they nonetheless operate usually—but not always—in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis. They often receive the same education as attorneys at civil law but without qualifications in advocacy, procedural law, or the law of evidence, somewhat comparable to solicitor training in certain common-law countries.
  Civil-law notaries are limited to areas of private law, that is, domestic law which regulates the relationships between individuals and in which the State is not directly concerned. The most common areas of practice for civil-law notaries are in residential and commercial conveyancing and registration, contract drafting, company formation, successions and estate planning, and powers of attorney.
context_section_description: A French civil-law notary, or notaire, is a highly specialized lawyer in private practice appointed as a public officer by the justice minister. The profession began admitting women in 1948, and by the start of 2008 women numbered 2,104 and accounted for 24.2% of all notaries. A notarial office (étude) usually includes ancillary staff like notaries' clerks (clerc de notaire) of different kinds, e.g., junior (clerc employé), specialist (clerc technicien), and supervisory clerks (clerc cadre). Each level is divided into at least three pay grades, as well as legal secretaries, trainee notaries (notaire stagiaire), and accountants. In smaller offices, succession clerks are kept separate since their work differs significantly from other practice areas; in larger firms, clerks are separated into divisions by specialization. While most clerks are caseworkers, some work as costing specialists or formalities clerks. Secretaries oftentimes go on to pursue clerking.
caption: 1400 French royal notary flourish
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