Guide
Find a notary for a signing
Search for the listed notaries who travel to a signing and take orders from companies — how they're ordered, what each line tells you, and sending one of them the order.
Find a notary searches Hand & Seal's listed notaries for the ones who travel to your signing and may notarize there. Use it when none of your own notaries covers a place, or you need someone who speaks a language. You send one of them the order; they accept or decline it like any other.
Search
Open Notaries, then Find a notary. It's the button at the top of Notaries.
Say where the signing is. Type a ZIP code or a town (with its state — “Irvine, CA”) into Where is the signing?.
Narrow it, if you like. What for — loan signings, trusts and estate documents, hospital visits and the rest — and Speaks, for a language besides English. Where any listed notary's commission has been checked against their state's own list, Commission checked against the state's roll shows too, to see only those.
Choose Find.
Read the list
The list says how many notaries travel to the place, one line each: their name, their business, their town, about how far away they are, an estimate from their own published fees, Commission checked where their state's list confirms it, any badge they've earned here, how many signings they've done here, and their reviews. On your desk marks one who is already on your list.
Open a line for the rest: their headline, how far they travel from where, the languages they speak, when they're next free, how the estimate is made up, and their reviews — with Send … an order and a link to their page.
Some states have a notary who is not an attorney say so, in set words, wherever they advertise — and a line here shows the notary's name and estimate. Where the state of the place you searched asks a notary for those words, that notary's line carries them, said as that state's requirement (“As Maryland requires: …”): always, in a state that asks them of every advertisement, and once the notary lists a language besides English, in a state that asks them only of advertising in another language. Where the state itself prints them in a language the notary lists, they're given in it too. A notary who has said they are an attorney licensed in that state has none. The line itself carries the searched state's words only — never another state's.
How they are ordered, under the list, says exactly how: first a commission the platform has checked against the state's own list (weighed only among notaries of the same state), then the day's turn — the order changes each day, so someone new is seen as often as someone with hundreds of signings. A badge for keeping signings gives a small lift within that turn. Nobody is ever placed lower for anything counted, saying no to a request never counts against anyone, and nobody can pay to be listed higher.
Why someone isn't listed
Each notary chooses whether companies they haven't worked with can send them orders; those who said no aren't shown. A notary is listed only while their account is active. If nobody comes up, try a bigger town nearby, or drop a filter.
Send one of them the order
Choose Send … an order on their line. The order form opens with them chosen, and the place you searched as Where.
Fill in the order and send it, as for any notary — see Send your first order.
They join your notaries. Once the order is sent, they're on your desk's list (marked Found in the directory), so the next order can go straight from Notaries — as long as they're still listed and still take orders from new companies. Once they've accepted one of your orders, you're a company they've worked with.
Good to know
- Distances and estimates are estimates — worked out from the middle of the notary's home town and their own published fees. The order itself carries the fee you offer, or their own fees if you leave it blank.
- An order goes to one notary at a time. To have someone else asked if they can't take it, name backups on the order (see Name backup notaries).
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