Kevin Beach

My Professional background

I obtained a degree in law from London University and qualified as a solicitor in 1976. I practised in various places in Greater London, running my own law firms from 1980 to 2015. I kept my name on the Roll of Solicitors after I retired, but withdrew it in 2022 when the Solicitors Regulation Authority started charging retired solicitors for the privilege of remaining on the record.

In 1983 I joined the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and subsequently dealt with many disputes referred through Chambers of Commerce and the Law Society. I became a Chartered Arbitrator after the Institute introduced that qualification around the turn of the millennium. I was also an adjudicator for the Communication and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS) while it was administered by the Chartered Institute. I retired as an arbitrator in 2015, when I closed my law practice.

I was appointed a Deputy District Judge in the County Court in 1993 and sat in courts throughout London and the South East for more than 26 years, until I retired from the bench in September 2019.

I came rather late to the notarial profession. I had always wanted to be a Notary, but for the first 25 years of my career the rules governing notarial practice in and around London reserved a substantial area to Scrivener Notaries, a specialist branch of the profession traditionally based in the City of London. The old legislation referred, rather intriguingly, to “the circuit of ten miles from the Royal Exchange”.

In fact, in the early 1980s I challenged the Faculty Office's interpretation of that boundary. I argued that a “circuit” of ten miles meant a circumference rather than a radius, pointing out that the statute separately included places such as Southwark within the restricted area, which seemed unnecessary if everything within a radius of ten miles was already included. The Faculty Office took the argument seriously, but told me that resolving it would require a formal hearing and that I would have to bear the costs whether I won or lost. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

The old restrictions were eventually swept away, and I studied for the notarial examinations and qualified in 2006. Although I retired from my other legal work some years ago, I still enjoy the challenges of being a Notary Public.

The History of Notaries

Literacy was rare in the ancient world. Even in ancient Greece and Rome, only a minority of the population could read and write. Those who could therefore possessed a valuable skill, and professional scribes, readers and document writers became important figures in public and commercial life.

The modern notarial profession has very ancient roots in these scribal traditions. The word Notary comes from the Latin notarius, originally referring to a writer or secretary, particularly one using notae, or shorthand signs and marks. Roman scribes recorded proceedings and prepared documents, and over the centuries these functions developed into a specialised legal and documentary profession.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire did not bring the Roman legal tradition to an end. Roman law survived particularly strongly in the Eastern Roman Empire and continued, in different forms, in western Europe. During the Middle Ages its rediscovery and systematic study profoundly influenced the developing legal systems of continental Europe. Notaries became an important part of that legal tradition, particularly in relation to property, inheritance and commercial transactions.

England developed differently.

The Norman Conquest did not sweep away all the laws and customs of Anglo-Saxon England. During the generations which followed, Norman institutions and older English practices developed together. In the reign of Henry II, during the second half of the 12th century, royal justice was greatly expanded and systematised. Royal judges travelled the country and increasingly consistent rules and procedures developed through the King's courts. From this emerged what became known as the Common Law of England.

England therefore did not generally adopt the revived Roman law which exerted such a powerful influence upon continental European legal systems.

This produced a lasting distinction between the English Common Law tradition, subsequently carried to many parts of the world under British influence, and the Civil Law traditions of continental Europe, much of which ultimately drew heavily upon Roman law.

Notaries belonged principally to that Civil Law tradition and consequently never occupied quite the same central position in English domestic law. But England's international commerce created a practical problem. English merchants and others conducting business abroad needed documents which would be recognised in countries whose legal traditions were very different from our own. The Notary became an important bridge between the two systems.

Notaries arrived in England during the Middle Ages. The organised history of the English notarial profession can conveniently be dated to 1279, when Pope Nicholas III authorised the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint notaries in England.

The Reformation did not bring that profession to an end. The Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 transferred to the Archbishop of Canterbury powers which had previously been exercised from Rome, including the appointment of Notaries Public. The Court of Faculties established under that legislation continues to lie at the heart of the regulation of notaries in England and Wales. The Faculty Office itself describes its origins as lying in the 1533 Act.

So there is an extraordinary thread of continuity. A system which had medieval and ultimately Roman origins survived the Reformation, the development of the modern legal professions and enormous changes in international commerce.

The profession itself changed considerably. In London a specialist branch developed: the Scrivener Notaries. The Public Notaries Act 1801 formally required anyone seeking admission as a notary within the jurisdiction of the Company of Scriveners first to take the freedom of that Company.

The Public Notaries Act 1833 subsequently provided for solicitors and others to become notaries outside London without undergoing the traditional notarial apprenticeship, but drew a formidable boundary around London: the City of London, the Liberties of Westminster, the Borough of Southwark and “the circuit of ten miles from the Royal Exchange”.

Those old geographical distinctions eventually disappeared. The Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 abolished the system under which public notaries were appointed to practise only within particular districts and removed the old apprenticeship provisions. The remaining statutory monopoly of the Scrivener Notaries in central London was subsequently abolished by the Access to Justice Act 1999.

Today, a Notary Public in England and Wales is a secular lawyer, but the historical connection with the Archbishop of Canterbury remains in the profession's constitutional arrangements. The Faculty Office regulates the profession through the jurisdiction which has come down to it through this remarkable history.

And that history explains the rather unusual position of the modern English Notary. We practise within a Common Law country, but much of our work involves documents intended for countries whose legal systems grew out of the Civil Law tradition.

And that is why people who have legal dealings abroad so often need their documents and transactions authenticated by a Notary Public. And that is why Notaries still have to study Roman Law!