It seems to me I heard somewhere that Kevin Gowen wrote in article
<44fdff39$0$19602$88260bb3@free.teranews.com>:

>declan_murphy@hotmail.com wrote:
>> jwb@csse.monash.edu.au wrote:
>>> The European civil-law notary (and the Japanese 公証人) really
>>> has no equivalent in Australia. I am at one with KG on this.

>> Is there a reasonably widely accepted translation into English of
>> 公証人?

>You could say "notary public", but that would not be very good at all.
>The notary of the civil-law jurisdictions is an elite class of lawyer.
>There is no equivalent in the common law jurisdictions, although Florida
>and Alabama have statutes that have created similar offices. In most
>civil law states, transactions such as wills, land transfers, adoptions,
>and so on must go through a notary to be legally effective. Japan is
>different in that the only transaction that requires a notary is a
>corporation's articles of incorporation. (See 会社法, 第30条1項).

In California a notary public primarily confirms the signatures and
identification of parties to a transaction; ISTM the most common place
to find a working notary is in a real estate office.  The law office I'm
most familiar with (a public agency) has notaries, but they are among
the clerical and secretarial staff, not the legal staff.
-- 
Don Kirkman