eSignature Licitness for Support in Mexico

How to eSign a document: e-signature licitness for Support in Mexico

good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinar titled remote online notarizations and eSignatures best practices and limitations today's webinar is being brought to you by the florida bars standing committee on technology and legal fuel the practice resource center of the florida bar this webinar is part of our series of webinars that we're hosting in conjunction with the standing committee on technology which will lead up to our all-day technology seminar being held in conjunction with the annual florida bar convention in june the details of this all-day technology seminar will be posted on the florida bars website as well as legalfuel.com in the coming days and weeks so please continue to look for those updates and you'll be able to register through there before we get started i'd like to go over a few housekeeping items we'll be recording this webinar and we'll share the link after the event the recording at any supporting resources will also be posted to our website legalfuel.com any questions you may have during today's presentation can be asked through the q a feature which you'll find down at the bottom of your zoom control panel our presenters will do the best to answer any questions you have however due to time constraints they may not be able to address them all today's presentation has been approved by the florida bar for one hour of general cle credit including one hour of technology the course number for today's presentation is four seven seven zero i would now like to introduce today's presenters olga gallanter is a founding partner of subrosa law a boutique business tax estate planning firm she focuses her practice on the issues of high net worth and international state planning and pre-investment planning olga routinely advises clients on business and corporate issues tax implications of investments in the us by foreign nationals and works with families on tax optimization of existing investments so usually she is a graduate of both far eastern national university law school in russia with honors and university of miami law magnum cumulative olga received her master's degree in estate planning from new york university of miami graduate school of law william gamble has been a lawyer for over 40 years he practiced law in the areas of tax securities and banking he has written three books on law and economics and emerging markets as well as many articles for journals all over the world he has spoken to cfa chapters in 15 countries in many u.s cities presently he is a consultant with ite governance usa helping companies constitute robust and compliant cyber security and privacy systems yields four it certifications including one of the most advanced as well as certifications for the gdpr and iso 27001 cyber security standard i'd now like to hand it over to olga and william and enjoy the presentation thank you so much jonathan before we get started i want to pre-face this presentation with some words of wisdom even though this presentation is on eSignatures and online notarizations i'm not necessarily a proponent of those tools in all circumstances there's certainly some things that are to be addressed and once one of the most important things for you to consider personally is that you should not try to implement those in your practice just because somebody else is doing it so it's important to understand that there are no prizes for the most technologically advanced uh setup of your law practice uh you should not create overwhelm for yourself and if there are tried and true methods that you're using and you're comfortable using you should continue to use them nobody is getting rid of the old school methods of executing documents so with that i guess forward we can get started with the presentation so the signature in general we should consider what that means what is a signature signature is evidence that authenticates writing signature is not part of the document itself it doesn't contain anything uh any information of its own but it does create legal significance right so it proves that a person theoretically speaking proves that a person has signed that writing and confirmed or consented to the terms of that writing and the notaries we use notaries as independent third parties impartial third parties their unbiased witness and in some circumstances they create evidence prima facie evidence which can matter in some circumstances because the burden of proof for example may shift from one party to another based on the fact that the writing was notarized so um in theory the laws um were drafted or the concept of notary exists uh part of it is to defer fraud so we have this you know independent person who can confirm the authenticity of somebody's writing so that if somebody accepts writing that was notarized they don't no longer have to question the authenticity so at least in theory these were the the reasons why we have notaries we have two layers of laws that apply uh one layer is the federal legislation is dated 2000 so it's relatively recent in the grand scheme of things of course as far as technology goes everything is very rapidly changing uh but generally speaking we do have a framework and uh that framework applies to most of the eSignature methods that you may be using in your practice uh you know the and anything similar would be operating under that law and it is uh the ability the ability of the party to elect eSignature as a method is a choice of the party so if everybody consents we are able to use eSignatures to sign our name to a document and as long as everybody consents to that just because it's done in a digital format is not a basis to invalidate the document so this is the general idea that we can use electronic methods to apply our signature in lieu of the physical signature we also have uniform and electronic transactions act which uh is a part of the florida uh statutes and electronic signature uh was in the past it was defined as a signature that's applied electronically under the reiteration that's currently in force electronic signature is a sound symbol or a process attached to or logically associated with the record so it's a more broad definition of what an electronic signature would mean under the statute and there are a couple of things that are obvious but i would like to mention here just because you have something in a digital format doesn't mean that it falls under the statute for example if you have a document that was signed in a traditional way but then it was copied and digitized in some way scanned it's not really a electronic signature that document is not electronically assigned within the meaning of the statute so the standard to prove the validity of the document or its contents would be the traditional uh signature the laws uh would apply to the traditional document and again why it matters for us is a lot of times the enforcing party who's trying to enforce the contract has the burden of establishing that the person against whom we're trying to enforce it has in fact applied their signature to the document so when you're trying to determine whether you have the proof be mindful of a digital copy of a document versus electronically signed document again it's something that may be obvious but worth mentioning the notary law the framework generally speaking so we have a person who has the uh responsibility of making sure the person who's signing the document is in fact signing the document right so we have pattern uh where we need to authenticate the signer to the notary when we're doing this in person the person typically would produce the id when we have an online authorization typically you have to show your id maybe you have to submit your id ahead of time but typically you also have to have some form of authentication while you're in the remote notary session and we'll talk a little bit about what that may look like the platforms may choose different methods and those are slightly evolving and developing i guess additional procedures for ease for example but remote online organization has to comply with several requirements you know i'm not going to restate the law but it is something that has to be recorded in a two-way video and audio conferencing software so some notaries use you know your typical platform such as zoom and then they are able to record it and then store it through the software that they use on their back end to manage their practice some have their own proprietary software that they will use for this two-way audio and video conferencing session so the the important thing is uh to remember is that you may have more uh logistical issues with an online notary session than you would with a traditional notary session and this is something that i've encountered and in my practice and that's something that caught me by surprise but for some reason you know clients even those who typically don't have any issues using technology on the day that they're supposed to appear and you know the window that we have for them they for some reason completely forget how to use their technology or they're caught off guard that they have to produce their id or confirm their identity or the way that the session is being recorded and you know they're feeling a little bit of bass for some reason so this has been uh sometimes it's very easy and it's very smooth and sometimes that additional layer of technology uh can be intimidating potentially to the client so uh but the notary does have to go through a separate course and they have to qualify to become a remote notary so this is not just any notary who's licensed who has the commission of a notary recording a session that they witness somebody signed this is not going to comply with the statute for remote online notarizations they actually have to use specific software and they have to comply with the procedures and they have to have that specific course and license to be the remote online notary so with that we can talk about what that session typically would look like usually you would upload your documents or you share them ahead of time because notary typically has to tag the document appropriately for the appropriate parties so they would assign a specific box for a signature for a specific person within the document and if there's multiple parties that there's just that's just more work for them to tag that document throughout once they send the document to the parties those tags would actually limit the signer to that specific box and not allow them to sign elsewhere this can this is great because they can't really sign when they're supposed to sign but if the notary either forgot to tag or maybe the attorney didn't communicate that a specific window has to be tagged or something we realized last minute there is no way for us to do that on the spot we have to potentially back out of that session re-upload the document let the notary do their job and then re-enter the session again and start it from the beginning so this is some this is the preparation part then during the session whoever signs the document has to authenticate that they are who say who they say they are they produce their id they you know place it next to their face and there's also potentially a uh authentication that's based on the knowledge of the signer so we'll we'll talk about the issues with that uh usually they use a social security uh number and the credit history database to authenticate uh the individual so they need to be prepared to answer some questions or they need to be prepared to for the notary to ask them questions in my practice we have something that's called a vulnerable adult i do primarily will stress in estates so we have something that's considered a vulnerable adult concept a vulnerable adult is a person who is limited in their abilities or depends on someone is not able to take care of themselves for either due to mental limitations physical limitations or just day-to-day tasks so that vulnerable adult would not be able to use the remote online notary session to execute their documents when i'm signing the will whether i have vulnerable adults involved or not the person actually has to answer those questions and confirm to the notary that no i don't have any issues taking care of my affairs i don't have any problems managing my daily tasks and things like that so clients may be surprised if the notary is asking them those questions because that's not something that typically would be asked of them if they were in a traditional notary session so prepping the client is important and probably more important because you know clients are a little bit uneasy about it to start with some absolutely love it and they're embracing it and some may be a little uncomfortable so just preparing them the types of questions that may be asked the authentication process is a little bit more involved and the fact that the notary session will be recorded and becomes a part of the executed documents that's also something that i recommend letting your clients know so they're aware so as far as the limitations right so what would be the reason why we would not want to use either eSignatures or remote notaries online notarization there could be actual legal limitations for example i've already brought up the issues with will stress in the states in order to execute a will you cannot be a vulnerable adult if you're a vulnerable adult remote online authorization or electronic signature is not available to you it's simply not something that would be valid another issue that i've encountered in my practice and i do work with a fair amount of foreign nationals foreign governments are very reluctant to accept those documents they are not bound by full faith and credit clause that uh you know the exchange between states is a little bit easier but even if the document is properly notarized in a number of unit states in the united states uh remote notaries have been available for quite some time but those documents even if they're properly notarized they would not be accepted in that foreign country so i do have to go through the more traditional methods because there's just not as much faith even though ironically right we do have a lot more evidence or record oftentimes with a digital signature than we do with a traditional signature that that in fact was the person who signed this document and this is a valid signature so there is this irony in my opinion that people are not trusting the digitally signed or notarized documents as much as they do the old school or wed inc uh signed documents so i always found it interesting that dichotomy we do also have to remember that the parties are not required to consent to the uh eSignature for example right so if a contract is signed between the parties one of the parties may say no i don't i don't want that document to be signed electronically i want wedding and they are they're not bound by law to have to do eSignatures so they could elect out of that and uh we have you know some mistrust right so and that's evident when you're dealing with government agencies or foreign governments you know can we actually trust the documents you know yes in theory there's a lot more evidence that this is the person who in fact signed the document and these are the authentic uh this is the authentic signature of the signer but we also have concerns what if somebody created the signature and it wasn't the signer what kind of evidence do we have what if somebody in bad faith actually modifies that if we have some kind of a digital error or a ransomware or there's a malfunction we have potentially documents going to the wrong place it's being sent to the wrong place somebody is misusing somebody's login credentials you know somebody logged in the computer and signed it on their behalf where the person were trying to enforce the contract against never actually signed that document so we have a number of of those things that people tend to be concerned about again in most circumstances we have a lot more evidence with a digital document and on the technical side i'm certainly not an expert and i will let william elaborate on the types of eSignatures that we have available in the types of i guess technology uh that goes into it and the uh metadata that is created as part of the digital record when the document is signed so i'm not going to go into as much detail on that because that's more of a williams part of the presentation the more technical part so the challenges um in my personal opinion the remote notary is more complicated and takes up more of my personal time than a traditionally signed document in the traditional setting it's extra two minutes of my time if that with a remote notary we kind of have to go over the documents ahead of time we cannot really do it while the notary is there on the audio video conferencing software with us because the notary is right there so the client doesn't want to talk about the things that they would naturally want to talk to me about or confirm before signing the document so the you know you kind of have to go through the document ahead of time deliver it to the notary ahead of time and make sure that it's properly tagged uh i've had clients provide an order with email without realizing that that email is associated with a specific device and they don't actually have that device on them it's someplace else so it's it's they're they're trying to use it from the ipad and they've never linked that particular work email to their personal ipad so we have to restart from the beginning because the document went to the email that they don't have access to um sometimes the clients will be on video and all you can see is their forehead right so they're they're looking down at the screen and all you can see is the forehead and maybe they uh occasionally lift their head enough for us to see who that is but we can't see who that that it is in fact this person throughout the entire session or maybe they're completely off screen maybe during the session we realize that somebody else is in the room with them and you know you see all of a sudden you see a third hand across the screen who's helping the client click through the remote notary session and basically yes at the direction of the client apply signature digital signature to the document so in of itself that may actually not be a problem if it's done at the direction of the client but this is something that may need to be disclosed so that it's part of that digital record of that session that this this occurred somebody else was assisting the client with actual technology piece or applying the signature on their behalf in one of my cases recently um we actually were at a disadvantage because we could not prove to judge's satisfaction that this technology is not something client is comfortable using or able to use it's an elderly client with a flip phone who is not mobile and they we could not produce that witness in time so we had to use a backup option or try to procure other witnesses to prove a document so the assumption that technology is readily available is something that you may need to overcome in your practice and you need to be prepared for that with and specifically to estate planning this is something i've already mentioned a vulnerable adult you cannot do a no electronic will this is not something that's available to you so to me again the irony this uh medium is meant to help people who are not mobile or maybe don't have the access to the attorney in their jurisdiction and it tends to be those very same people would probably fall under vulnerable adult statute because of their immobility so the the statute is meant to help you know with the availability make it more available make sure that more people have access to this technology and are able to use the technology to for example sign a will but the very same people are the ones who are excluded by the statutes so it's that balance that i understand we're trying to strike to protect the vulnerable adults but at the same time i think it goes against pretty much everything that that statute was trying to accomplish in the first place so the the one thing again i have encountered in my experience with the clients they try to you know you they prepared they're they're you know ready to go and they try to answer the questions that the notary asks to prove their identity and this is called dynamic knowledge based authentication these are the types of questions you may know for example have you lived on any of the following streets what was the last charge on your card or what was the amount of the charge on april 19 and questions of that nature so the issue is that maybe that information is available and it's something they can pull together but a lot of times there is that cap of time they have to answer a number of questions within two minutes and i've had a client say i don't remember these are and they can go as far back as 20 years so those questions can go quite a while back the client may simply not remember especially if they move around a lot or they own a lot of properties or operate a lot of businesses they may not actually have that information available readily available or they can't recall so i've had clients fail that authentication it means we can't proceed unless there is another option for us to use to authenticate the client we're simply not able not able to proceed so that's an issue for you to be aware of as a practitioner have a backup plan if you need a backup plan or make sure the client is properly practiced to what they may need to do during the session so uh in estate planning one of the issues that we encounter is we have to have two witnesses in a notary typically for the document to be valid these are the formalities of a will and they have to be present in front of each other and sign the document basically at the same time so that means i have to pull everybody into the session at the same time and that's typically not an issue that's fine but if one person has the available technology available the other person does not i cannot piecemeal this process i have it's either all or nothing right unless the document can be signed in counterparts and we don't have to all be together at the same time this can be a hurdle as well um all right so practical considerations um i will wrap up my portion of the presentation before we uh move on to williams portion practical considerations again prep the client make sure they understand what that's going to look like if this is your first time usually you will receive instructions by email ahead of time you can read those instructions and then make sure the clients are either read those instructions or try to explain to them what's going to be expected of them they are not going to read the email they received from the notary until the time uh that they need to actually log in uh please ensure that the technology they're going to use if you if you have the ability to do that is going to be compatible with the software being used is the screen going to be so small that there won't be able to see anything or is this the email that's associated with this device um an issue for me is the client's ability to understand the notary and on the platforms typically the notary will have a requirement that the platform itself generates so even if that's not something required by the statute the platform may require the notary to have that standard in place but if the person does not speak english as their first language or don't speak enough to understand without somebody else's assistance somebody has to translate the communication between the signer and the notary the notary will require the document to be translated in the client's native language this is absolutely something that would not be required in a traditional notary session so you know the client all they have all we're trying to see is is did the client willingly sign this document do they understand what they're signing and we don't really have to have the document in that second language and this can be very pricey to get that notary uh to get that requirement satisfied if the document is linked and we have to translate it ahead of time so um the the translation to me can become a hurdle uh in order to be able to use the a particular platform for example the uh remote online notary may not be available to a client who does not have a social security number or credit history because this is how the client is being authenticated unless there is another option for them to use to authenticate the client maybe it's possible the notary actually personally knows the signer that's that's another option right so now we don't no longer have to authenticate using that method sometimes we are able to submit a statement to the notary that we personally know the signer and we guarantee to the notary that this is the correct person or the person who they say they are so um i think that concludes my uh practical considerations um abortion and i think yes so we are moving on to uh william's piece i think there will be a little bit of time at the end of the session to answer any questions and my content content information is at the end of the presentation as well i'm more than happy to answer any questions i've done a great number of these things at this point and this presentation was uh sort of born out of the wish to help other practitioners go through this process with less of growing pains than i did during the past year so uh with that i would like to hand it over to william thank you olga anyway so i'm the geek in this this crowd uh i don't talk to lawyers all i do is talk to uh it guys and um and girls all the all different types of people who basically do this all day and i also want to say um fyi uh you can hack anything so and and the hackers are truly admirable because they're exceptionally imaginative in how they do it so these are basically the three types of um electronic signatures that are allowed under various laws uh in the united states we basically have the uh the basic electronic signature and the advanced electronic digital signature and basically what you do in cyber security is you try to protect confidentiality availability and integrity and with the other layer on top of this is making sure that you get involved in uh authenticity because remember everything that olga had that lovely list of things that can go wrong and all that stuff uh is easily is you know it comes from different things for example the concept of authentication anybody that she was talking about the two methods of authentication when one's dynamic you ask so many questions and the other static you say what's your social security number well social security numbers are available in the black on the dark web for about a bucket a number um and in terms of the other informations in terms of the dynamic information there's a whole area that usually used by hackers for uh and you know pen testers ethical hackers which is called open source uh intelligence or where there's actually uh it's o int is the name for it so when if someone is really wants to break into one of these things that's the type of information and stuff that they're going that they possibly can use the different levels here are the simple advanced and the and the qes now the qes is only available in europe uh and it's a different layer next slide oh okay this is how an aes is designed this is called in the world this is called the pki infrastructure or x dot 509 for you people really have problems uh anyway every time you see this when you see this little lock there if you've ever seen that when you go to your banking website this is https and https means that what you have is what you do is you get a exchange of of of certifications uh of certificates and there are what there are are trusted third parties in this in this entire process and what happens in the process which is is rather ungainly uh it involves what's called uh asymmetrical uh cryptography in which one party has a public key and the other has a private key and you create a document using your private key and then you send it to somebody who's asked for it and they decrypt it with their with your public key and that's what all these certificates are this is an example of a certificate and you find these things out by clicking clicking the little lock and all these cool things show up and it shows where your public key is and what the cryptography is and it shows where you get your certificates now the way this comes in for a notary is what happens when you log in the notary has a specific uh a certificate that they get and only they can get uh and that certificate is what they how you authenticate to something so they you get the certificate that when you log in and then actually you can use that certificate to get an encrypted key and you use that encrypted key to compare it to the certificate key with a hash an algorithm a hash is just an algorithm that is used to mathematically calculate what's in a document and that way you tell okay i'm william gamble i can do this and i know that uh i'm looking at a specific website and so when you go to the notary website what you're doing is you're using the notary as for a third-party authentication but the public key infrastructure is goes runs throughout the entire system it's not just for uh it's not just for um it's not just for uh e notaries that's basically everything and by the way we're eventually going a lot of the browsers won't look at the old style system pretty soon so make sure you're up to date okay next next slide please okay this is another example of how this whole thing works is what happens is the signer goes on and they and they create a document and then that get that gets hashed and then that gets encrypted with a private key so we have an encrypted digitally documented sign and then it goes out into this thing this thing in our business is called the wild because it's it's what's called an untrusted network where anything and anything can and does happen and when it gets down here what you do is you decrypt it with the with the public key here which you got from the certificate and then that's compared to the hash algorithm and if that if those hash values actually look the same then you know that the proper person has signed the document of course uh a lot of stuff can happen around here and also in terms of the certifications and and various types of things could happen especially in terms of uh the videos and all sorts of stuff like that okay the next one please okay there which to start out with the ses the ses the simple e signature and that is again a ghost that's the uh the the first law that we saw uh and that is um again it's logically or associated with with some particular document and that's not meaning that it's bad i mean there are certain types of things that if there's not a lot of money at stake then you can use that the problem is it's easy to forge the thing is about signatures and what level of signatures you want to look at and also what level of cyber security you want to use for anything as i tell my delegates uh what's the one of the first things you have to look at is all information is not created equal there is some information at least ing to facebook that is always it's out there it's you know and it doesn't really make any difference like it's very easy to find my name my telephone number my address for example uh in any very simple search um more in-depth searches are also possible and you can actually do those uh but the some of this information is is not as interesting and what you look at is what is easy to monetize in terms of uh the information involved so for example a residential lease agreement might not be easy to monetize so as a result you can use a lesser degree of signature in order to to put that up to to uh to finish the uh the transaction because that's not employment contracts that's it's not you know we pretty well know when we employ somebody that that's the one person showing up unless there is something out there that can be filled it's not a it may not be a really big deal procurement document sales that type of commercial agreements might be in a different layer because a commercial agreement might have certain uh payment terms which uh are always very nice to see for a hacker you always want i mean under certain circumstances if your uh c ceo was unwise enough to say that they're going on vacation you can almost guarantee that on that friday afternoon that the controller will get an email stating that uh a specific vendor is owed a certain amount of money and by the way they changed their bank account number so uh and so you email the information to the wrong people but in certain circumstances you really really have to think about the data you're dealing with and the transaction you're dealing with and to find out whether it's easy to monetize it or not okay okay next next slide okay this is the next layer up now um what this does is this uses starts using the pki infrastructure so what we're trying to do here is authenticate something and what we we've gotten to the point where we're not sending stuff in over the web in clear text what we're doing is we're sending stuff that is um that is encrypted or if you want to send stuff it's clear in clear text it might be a better idea to use a secure network so like that's when you're talking about a vpn type of thing where you you know it is a secure network that's not available to anybody else but what this is is this is because you've encrypted the the key and you've identified the signatory you have a method of actually creating something that is shall we say more difficult to hack right now for certain types of cryptography uh they are unhackable you cannot brute force them so that is for most uh higher level hashes but uh the time is coming as we move to quantum uh computing where we will get to we'll have to come up with different methods especially for asymmetric cryptography and so the whole infrastructure might be might be in danger here the whole point of this one is to ensure integrity and availability normally the documents themselves are usually probably encrypted with what's called symmetric cryptography so usually they will won't leave under certain circumstances you do have to be careful with these things in terms of when you store them in any time you mess with a bit of uh on word or something like that it could change the hash so you have to be very careful about how you store them and what you do with them with the difference is with an aes signature usually the burden of proof is on is with the signatory okay next slide please next slide ah boom okay this is your highest level now interestingly enough the uh qes uh does not exist in the united states the default here is something similar to what to what olga's was talking about with the online notary system the difference between an aes and a qes is what they've done is they've inserted a independent third party into the process and in europe what they have is is they have a directive and this has established this as part of the uh of of the process so what you you have created what's called a qualified trust service provider if you think of that as the sort of european notary and of course the notary in europe is totally different quite often a totally different type of things but there are certain signatures that are managed by these types of people quite often they are the same organizations like uh or something like that but what they're doing is they will be the ones who will probably ask the questions they will and these can only be done on certain qualified signature creation devices you cannot the difference is you can't you know uh do that with your own technology if you have to contact and of course pay a qualified trust service provider and they will have the signature creation devices and they will manage the whole process and they will you know provide the protection and things like this with the pki infrastructure how that's done in the united states is usually that's that that the transfer of certificates is usually not done on your uh browser usually that's done by some company like who actually uh works on that however i one of the problems i want to warn you in i just saw this is that uh we have to remember that hackers are not guys in their parents basement with hoodies these people are fabulously rich they're earning literally 1.5 billion trillion dollars a year they can afford any type of the best cyber security the best you know you know the best coders the best artists the best people website creators and so they can create something that is totally perfect now 10 years ago you might have looked at one of these things and said oh the english isn't right these days it that's not what it happens and one of the things i saw recently which was sort of cute was a a uh email and it looked exactly like it came from and it said by the way here's your invoice and here's the and here's the document please download it and of course if you did click on that thing uh you would be downloading a macro enabled type of thing which would start downloading malware onto your system so uh even though the is very good there are ways there are various ways to hack this as well so um you know uh at some level it might again as what olga was talking about you might it might be a better idea just to stay with the old school the difference with the with the qes under the eu regulation is that the burden of proof shifts not to the person who made the signatory but the person who is contesting it so that's a a big issue for these people all right the next slide please okay those are these are some of the u.s signing services uh all of them you know have different costs and i probably is the bigger biggest one but uh they all basically are working on the same technology so some of them have different whistles and bells what's interesting is that if you go to the websites of these companies in europe they all offer the qes while that is not basically available in the united states one thing i would like to mention um one of the things i also do is teach the gdpr and privacy issues are or a big deal with us uh especially after the end of the u.s eu treaty privacy shield which ended last summer so transfers of information outside of the eu or can be a real issue uh and right now we are transferring information even worse we're transmitting biometric information so now we have we have to worry about the all the new biometric laws the illinois biometric information protection act bipa and article 44 the gdpr in addition to the new concept of sensitive information under the california privacy rights act so when you do do these types of things uh yes it's easy to go on zoom and do that type of stuff but in the process you are risking a dump much of violating some of the other laws and some of the privacy laws around the world so uh and around the world now there are about 20 25 other countries that have adopted something like the gdpr so when you set up some of the process that's one of the things that you should consider are the privacy indications uh and other issues there's another thought here is so it might be a good idea to get everybody's consent in some way shape or form uh before you you know start the process because you are gaining access to private information and you're sending it uh to different places that may require different types of requirements all right the next slide please okay i always tell my delegates that i'm a time traveler i'm from the last century uh and in my century as olga pointed out um there are other ways to do this and some ways there are are there are you know just work better i mean for example olga was telling me about you know if you're a qualified will protector well if you if someone gives you a will and it's a digital will to keep um you know as soon as you open the file on a word document uh you may change the metadata or the hash of that particular file so there are certain things you have to be very very careful of in terms of dealing with you know a word document so the best way to do possibly do with that is to um put it on e drive and do what we call air gapping in other words keep it away from the internet because anything can happen on the internet but this you can also get these things encrypted uh so that might be a way to do it or you make sure that it's read only uh if you if it's read only then the metadata on the document doesn't change and by the way there's a major difference between the metadata on the document and the metadata outside the document it stuff it's like a library card and a book you change the library card you don't change the book but going back and changing the actual document uh can have some unintended consequence which may come up uh in a forensic element and they may change various types of aspects to uh these various documents just because it looks nice doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually going to get what you think you get so it's sometimes better just to you know have somebody sign it and then or sign what they call duplicate copies and then keep these in a file uh away from any online possibility if it's online or if it's available online you that's you know in my world only the paranoid survive so you have to be very these technologies are great they're lots of fun to play with but each and every one of them has potential downsides uh which have sort of gotten worse with time all right thank you very much that's i think that's the end of the slides olga questions haley all right we're at the end of our slides uh there was one question should i should i talk uh talk through now yeah sure there was one question i answered it already can remotely notarize document be apostle and the answer is yes one thing to keep in mind and actually let me let me back up and explain for those who may not know what apostille is so apostil is done pursuant to the hate convention from 1964 or something of that nature there's a number of member states most countries in the world are member states so it's an agreement between the countries that if something was notarized there is an agency within that country within that jurisdiction that can confirm the validity of that notarization and confirm that it was properly done and that becomes the all everything that the receiving state would need to accept that as a truly notarized document as if it was done for example the document in florida was notarized if it has an upper steel it's and i'm trying to use it in germany the german authorities would accept it as if it was done pursuant to german law so that's the nature of the upper steel procedure so what's important to remember when up is stealing a document you have to actually understand where the notary is licensed pursuant to which state do we have to use the notarization procedures and the upper steel process so sitting in broward county in florida my client could be in new york and the notary could be in virginia so if i'm trying to help steal that document then i have to do it through the epistle procedures in virginia if it's a florida notary we submit it to throughout through the florida procedures but the short answer is yes it's considered a properly notarized document and the state would confirm it any other questions no i don't have questions all right okay thank you very much for your attention um it was lovely to speak to all right thank you very much if you have any follow-up questions my contact information is on the screen right now happy to answer any practical questions or share in private any of the services that i use i don't necessarily endorse them but i'm happy to share everything that i've actually tried out thank you both william and olga for a great presentation just remind everybody again that the course number for today was 4770 and if you'd like to watch this presentation again the recording will be available on legalfuel.com thank you and have a great day thank you