How to Prepare Documents
A notary certifies signatures on documents. At Nota Bene, documents for signing are stored in notecards. It is the content of the notecard, not its inventory name, description or permissions that are considered part of the document.
You create a new document by opening your inventory, selecting some folder, and then choosing 'New Note' from the 'Create' menu. Then type your document text into the new notecard. Then click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the card. Later, at the notary, you'll drag the this item from your inventory window onto the notary desk.
Try to keep your documents short and too the point. Clarity is best when it comes to agreements. The notary does have a limit of about four thousand characters per document (roughly 650 words, or 80 lines).
Permissions
In order for the notary to take the document, and then put it in a notary receipt that you and the other signers can copy, the notecard must have the "Allow anyone to copy" permission set. To set this, select the notecard in your inventory, right click on it, and choose "Properties" from the menu. Then click the "Allow anyone to copy" check box so that it is enabled (has an 'x').
Since the notecard stays within your inventory, or within the notary receipt, setting this permission will not expose your document. Only people you give the notary receipt to will be able to see the document.
Document Titles
A document has a title that is recorded in the notary receipt. By default this is the name of the notecard, but you can, and should, put a better title in the text of the notecard itself. You do this by writing the title on a line by itself preceded by four stars like this:
**** Contract to Build a Palace
Signature Lines
A document can also have signature lines. Often, two or more people must sign a document, but each in a different capacity. Signature lines are added to a document by writing the 'role' on a line by itself preceded by four underscores, like this:
____ Builder
____ Prince
This would define two roles for this document. When an avatar signs this document, they need to choose which line they are signing on. You can have multiple signature lines in a document, and more than one avatar can sign on the same line if, say, there were two builders).
Keep roles short, under 12 characters, as these will appear in dialog buttons. If you need to explain them, do so like this:
____ Leaper, the frog that will do the jumping
____ Leapee, the frog that will be jumped over
The comma separates the role title that will appear in the dialog button from its description.
Mediation
The notary recommends including a mediation clause in contracts and agreements. Doing so up front ensures that all parties agree to use mediation as a means to resolve disputes. It is of course much easier to agree on this before a contract is entered into than after a dispute occurs.
The standard mediation clause is:
All parties agree that should a dispute concerning this matter arise, we will enter into mediation using the services and procedures of the SL Mediators group.
You can find out more about mediation and the SL Mediators group from their desk in the Nota Bene office.
Document Digests
The notary uses a concept called a 'digest' to ensure that the signatures are affixed to a particular version of the content. If someone tampers with the contents of the document notecard stored in the receipt, the digest won't match the digest recorded elsewhere in the receipt. If someone tampers with both the document and the recorded digest, then the notarization will no longer validate.
Therefore, you should only consider the version of the document stored in the notary receipt as authoritative. To be sure that it hasn't been tampered with, you can ask the receipt to verify the digest, and you can ask the notary to check the notarization. If these checks pass, then that is the version of the document that was signed.
Note: You can perform both of the verification checks yourself on your own computer, so you don't have to trust the notary! Doing so does require some technical savvy. See the Technical Details help notecard.