Thursday, March 26, 2020, update

Another busy day at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds. The systems we've put into place for receiving and recording electronic recordings, mailed-in documents, and dropped-off documents are all working well (see my recent blog posts for details on each).

We're also spending a lot of time unpacking and organizing our records and equipment in our beautiful new space in the just-opened Lowell Justice Center. In one way, having the public kept out of the building by the emergency orders in place has made it easier for us to accomplish all the necessary housekeeping and IT tasks.

This is especially true because we've divided the registry workforce into two teams with one working this week and the other next. The twofold purpose of this measure is to reduce the number of employees in the office and thereby increase the spacing between us. The second reason is to build some redundancy in case someone gets sick and all who have been working with that person have to self-quarantine for two weeks. If that happened with the entire staff present, we'd have to shut down the registry for two weeks. With two separate teams, the second team could step in and run the office during the quarantine.

While we do have the capability of processing incoming electronic recordings from offsite, I think we better serve the public by being in the office to handle mail and drop-off recordings as well as e-filings.

Last night I mentioned a new procedure promulgated by the Land Court for obtaining approval for certain documents. The Land Court has actually issued a number of orders relative to the pandemic, all are available on the Court System Response to Covid-19 page (scroll down to Land Court).

Also, State Senator Bruce Tarr and many co-sponsors have filed legislation that would permit a type of remote video notarization. In the 20 or so states that already allow remote video notarization, most contemplate that being done with an electronic document. The person signing has the document on a tablet or mobile phone and then activates the device's camera so the notary can see the person electronically signing the document. The video of the procedure is all archived in case questions arise, and the fully executed electronic document can then be whisked via the internet to the proper registry of deeds for electronic recording.

The Massachusetts proposal, SD. 2882, is kind of a hybrid of the traditional notarial act that takes place by signing a piece of paper with pen and ink and the remote video laws of other states. The Massachusetts law seems to require a lawyer to (snail)mail or courier a paper document to the client who would then sign it while on video camera with the lawyer watching the video feed from a distant location. Once the paper document was signed, the client would then mail or Fedex it back to the lawyer. The lawyer, once receiving it, would sign the paper document with pen and ink and then record it via electronic recording with the registry of deeds.

I've long had an interest in this area and have previously written about in-person electronic acknowledgements and also about remote video acknowledgements.

My experience has been that many lawyers who work in this field have long seen remote video acknowledgements as an existential threat to their business model and have therefore done everything possible to prevent such legislation from moving forward in Massachusetts. This bill seems precisely crafted to protect the interests of those lawyers while at the same time allowing them to continue doing business notwithstanding the extreme distancing requirements demanded by the pandemic. In other words, it's unlikely that they will try to kill this bill.

I find nothing objectionable about this bill and do hope it's enacted because by keeping people separated it will reduce the risks of infection spread. But hopefully this is more of a foot-in-the-door for remote video acknowledgments rather than the first and final move in that direction in Massachusetts.