For a person to become a scrivener notary he or she must first qualify as a general notary. An applicant for admission as a general notary must first obtain the practical qualifications specified in the Notaries (Qualification) Rules 2013. These require that the prospective notary must have followed and obtained a satisfactory standard in a course or courses of study covering all the following subjects: Public & Constitutional Law, Law of Property, Law of Contract, Law of the European Union, Equity and the Law of Trusts, Conveyancing, the Law and Practice of Companies and Partnerships, Wills, Probate and Administration, Roman Law as an Introduction to Civil-Law Systems, Private International Law and by completing the two-year distance-learning Notarial Practice Course provided by the Faculty of Laws at University College London. A general notary who intends to qualify as a scrivener notary and has provided notice of this intention to the Clerk of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London may be referred to as a candidate scrivener notary.
Candidate scrivener notaries must enter into a two-year period of supervision with a practising scrivener notary of at least five years’ standing before they can qualify. In practice, many trainees within the firms comprised of scrivener notaries enter into a prescribed training agreement to ensure that the provision of adequate supervision is met.
In addition to having passed the exams required to qualify as a general notary, the candidate scrivener notary will have also been examined by the Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London under the provisions of the Scrivener (Qualifications) Rules 1998. These Rules require the candidate scrivener notary to pass examinations in advanced notarial practice, the legal system of a foreign country and two foreign languages (comprising both translation and legal drafting skills). These exams consist of five papers, each lasting three hours.