Notarial Records              

The Notarial System

The European Civil Law tradition prevailed in France and her colonies, meaning that transactional law and functions involved with the preparation and authentication—and even the preservation—of legal documents developed as a separate system from the functions of the courts and its advocates, or attorneys. Under a legal tradition that valued the introduction of written evidence over oral testimony, notaries were responsible for preparing those legal documents and authenticating them for use by parties to an infinite variety of legal transactions, as well as for presentation to the courts.

 Protocols As The Means Of Recordation And Preservation: Physical Arrangement And Indexing

In addition to preparing and authenticating documents, the notaire publique also had full responsibility for recording his transactions in a format that would preserve them for future reference by the parties, courts and other elements of society. The result was the creation of the permanent notarial register, or protocol. In some parts of France at the end of each year the notary arranged for the binding of the individual documents he had prepared into a single volume arranged in chronological order, often adding a cover sheet and table of contents. In other parts the documents were arranged in chronological order and stored in tied bundles. In larger notarial offices (Etudes) certain documents such as testaments were placed in separate books or bundles.