The NNA presented the findings of its position paper, Paper, Pixels, and Policy, to the Notary Public Administrators Section of the National Association of Secretaries of State this past July. The full report is available at the link above.
If you were commissioned as a Notary in the year 2000 and stepped away until today, you would hardly recognize your state statutes. Back then, reading all of your state’s Notary laws might have taken a coffee break. Now it can take the better part of an afternoon. That’s not an exaggeration — it’s a measurable fact, and it tells the story of one of the most dramatic transformations in the history of the American Notary office.
The National Notary Association recently calculated the number of words in the main Notary statutes of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, comparing their length in 2000 with their length in 2025. The findings are striking. Every single jurisdiction’s Notary laws grew. On average, word counts climbed from about 3,500 to nearly 9,500, a 171 percent increase. Reading times rose right along with them, from an average of 23 minutes in 2000 to 63 minutes in 2025.
Some states saw truly staggering growth. Massachusetts led the pack, with its Notary statutes ballooning 1,382 percent. Laws that once took 4 minutes to read now take a full hour. North Carolina added the most words of any state, nearly 19,000, turning a 20-minute read into a 2-hour-and-25-minute slog. California, whose statutes were already lengthy in 2000, saw its reading time grow from 51 minutes to 2 hours and 20 minutes. Even the statutes that changed the least, like Georgia’s, still added words.
Why were so many new Notary statutes enacted in the past 25 years?
The single biggest driver was technology-based notarial acts. Early in-person electronic notarization (IPEN) laws appeared in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the real turning point came in 2011, when Virginia enacted the nation’s first remote notarization law. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 22 states had enacted remote notarization. By 2025, that number had jumped to 48. These enactments added words — lots of them.
A second factor was the modernization of long-neglected statutes. Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont had Notary laws that sat largely unchanged for years. When those states finally updated them, they did so in a big way. As a group, these states posted an average growth rate of 619 percent, more than double the national state-level percentage increase.
Third came a wave of stronger consumer protection laws. Mandatory Notary training, uncommon in the year 2000, is now required in half of all jurisdictions. States also added journal requirements, signer identification rules, conflict-of-interest provisions, and penalties for misconduct, among other reforms.
Finally, the Uniform Law Commission’s Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts (RULONA), first published in 2010, arrived at just the right time, prompting many states to modernize and expand their statutes.
What these new laws mean for Notaries
Behind all these numbers is a simple truth the NNA has long championed: Notaries are more important than ever. The statutes would not have grown if Notaries were not needed. The past 25 years proved this again and again in good times and bad: through refinance booms, through the foreclosure crisis that exposed what happens when notarial procedures are compromised, and through COVID-19, when state governors and legislatures issued scores of executive orders affecting notarial practice and federal authorities classified Notaries as essential workers.
That said, the study points to a few areas where the profession needs to catch up.
Training must keep pace. Today’s statutes are much longer, yet too many states still require no formal Notary education. Even where training exists, the 1 to 6 hours that states require simply can’t cover the modern reforms that now define the Notary’s job.
Fees must reflect reality. Notaries carry more responsibility and liability than ever, yet most states still cap fees at $5 to $10, and a few limit them to as little as $2. Because fees are rarely updated, they often fall below inflation benchmarks. A $2 fee set in New York back in 1991 would be worth about $5 today. Compensation should keep up with the profession’s growing demands.
Laws need regular review. The explosive growth since 2000 shows how quickly the landscape can change. To prevent statutes from stagnating over the next 25 years, legislatures should hold recurring “sunset reviews” that require legislators to reexamine and modernize their Notary laws. Colorado is one state that already does this. Its most recent review raised maximum fees to $15 for traditional acts and $25 for remote notarizations.
Looking ahead to the future for Notaries
The remarkable growth of Notary statutes is more than a word-count curiosity. It’s proof of how far notarization has traveled in a single generation, and a signal of how much further it will go. As the nation moves deeper into a digital-first era, the law must offer a clear, modern framework for the Notary’s authority, training, compensation, and oversight.
What is certain is this: over the next 25 years, Notaries will face new challenges, the law will keep evolving, and Notaries will adapt once again, filling a role that will be more important than ever.
Bill Anderson is Vice President of Government Affairs at the National Notary Association.