Notarial Practice
Notarial practice covers how acts are prepared, verified, executed, and recorded. A candidate must understand identification of parties, capacity checks, reading and explaining the instrument, witnessing signatures, and entry into the notarial register. Each act should record date, place, parties, identity documents, the nature of the act, and the notary's signature and seal. Powers of attorney, acknowledgements, attestations of signature, and certification of copies each have distinct formal requirements.
Traps: accepting a copy of an identity document without seeing the original; allowing a signatory who does not understand the language to sign without a sworn translator; backdating or leaving blanks in an act; and failing to note a representative's authority. Questions often present a document signed by an agent and ask what the notary must verify: the power of attorney, its scope, and its validity at the time of signing.
Rule of thumb: identify, verify capacity and authority, explain, witness, record, seal. Worked example: a company director signs a sale deed; the notary must check the commercial registration extract, the board resolution, and the signatory's authority, then record those documents in the register. If the resolution postdates the deed, the act is defective.
Also know refusals: a notary must decline acts that are unlawful, contrary to public order, or beyond competence, and should record the refusal. Study the difference between an attestation of signature and a certification of content; the former confirms identity and signature, not the truth of the document.