The landscape is changing in the legal sector at an unprecedented rate. In an effort to streamline workloads and make them more efficient, for example, over 96% of the UK’s law firms now use emerging technologies like AI.
Due to the benefits AI provides, another one-third of the country’s firms wish to invest more than more than £100,000 in digital tools in 2025. Clients similarly prefer these developments, with between 38% to 42% of the respondents surveyed by Clio stating they’re comfortable using chatbots, emails, mobile apps, and websites to get in touch with lawyers.
Of course, notaries aren’t exempt from these changes. Even the UK Legalisation Office began accepting digital legal documents, including ‘e-Apostille’ certificates, in 2022, many of which have to do with the overseas activities the country’s notaries work to authenticate. UK e-Apostilles are now recognised in over a hundred different countries, including Italy, the Netherlands, Panama, and the Philippines.
To comply with both evolving client preferences and the resulting changes to the UK’s legal landscape, notaries must also look at adapting these digital tools. In the process, however, they must have one key foundation for their digitalisation efforts: a stable internet connection.
With the UK experiencing notoriously slow internet speeds — which cause London’s SMEs alone to lose over £28 billion a year in lost productivity and revenue—securing the necessary bandwidth is something the country’s notaries want to pay close attention to. Here’s why having it will help them adapt to shifting industry trends:
Better connections for remote online notarisation (RON)
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, demand for notaries in the UK has skyrocketed to an all-time high. That’s put a strain on the current number of notaries working in the country, resulting in the rise of remote online notarisation or RON. Much like telehealth, RON helps clients to quickly and easily connect with a notary via video call, allowing the latter to verify the former’s identities and authenticate their documents without having to be physically present.
That’s the main reason why notaries should opt for full fibre broadband. Internet service provider Zzoomm shows how this kind of plan uses more advanced fibre optic cables that connect it directly to a property, facilitating much faster and more reliable connections that aren’t subject to buffering and downtime. Aside from benefiting from seamless videoconferencing and document authentication, notaries with these internet connections can more easily use applications like RedSeal a cloud-based Client Records and Document Management System built especially for notaries, helping them better service today’s more tech-savvy clients in a more timely and efficient manner.
More opportunities to streamline legal processes
In speaking of efficiency, it’s also important to note the number of digital tools that notaries can currently leverage to streamline their workflows. With platforms like DocuSign or Adobe allowing users to remotely access, edit, and manage documents — often with the help of AI — notaries can easily cut down on manual and repetitive tasks like proofreading so they can spend more time on more critical processes like client verification and document authentication. That’s especially true now amid the growing acceptance of the electronic signature, or eSignature. UK law currently recognises digital signature formats as a way for signers to verify their intent to authenticate a document. With dedicated legal eSignature platforms such as TrustPro further integrating their services into the likes of DocuSign or Adobe, users can digitise and streamline the entire notarisation process while remaining compliant with industry regulations.
Notaries will want a fast and reliable internet connection to use these platforms because the latter is reliant on cloud-based technology. The cloud allows users to synchronise updates like edits and eSignature additions across various devices to ensure full understanding between all parties signing a legal document. Traditional copper wire internet connections, in contrast to full fibre connections, may see notaries experiencing lags and downtime that can affect those synchronisation features and take away from the benefits offered by digital notary tools.
Improved means to prioritise cybersecurity
Notaries don’t just need a fast and stable internet connection — they need a secure one, too. Research from the Information Commissioner’s Office shows that the legal sector is a particularly attractive target for cybercriminals due to the sheer amount of sensitive information it works with. In fact, roughly 86% of the breaches that occurred in the legal industry in the past year involved the theft of basic personal identifiable information.
As such, notaries must pay attention to the security offered by the internet service providers they choose to work with. Onestream, for example, has partnered with the virtual private network provider NordVPN. Bundling NordVPN’s offerings with its broadband plans allows users to forge private connections to the web that cannot be tracked by both cybercriminals and OneStream itself. In availing of internet services like these, notaries can more easily streamline their workflows with cloud-based digital tools, facilitate in-demand RON processes, and protect sensitive client information all the while.
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