AI for notaries, without breaching professional secrecy
Preparing a draft deed, reviewing a preliminary sale agreement, sorting out an estate with six heirs, building the settlement of a divorce: AI helps with all of it. But a notary's file is made of civil-status records, ID documents, bank statements and family histories. Hidden Tokens codes those values on the office's own computer before Claude or ChatGPT reads anything, and puts the real ones back into the draft, on the same computer.
- This page is for civil-law notaries, who draft deeds and keep them. In France, the notaries' code of conduct (Decree 2023-1297, Article 8) binds the notary and everyone under their authority to professional secrecy, which it calls "general and absolute"; breaching it falls under Article 226-13 of the Criminal Code.
- The French notarial professional rules (2024) extend that secrecy to documents and correspondence, electronic included, and ask notaries to instruct their staff and service providers accordingly.
- Hidden Tokens replaces names, dates of birth, social security numbers, ID numbers, IBANs and addresses with consistent codes, on the computer, before the AI. The vocabulary of the deed, the estate and the tax stays readable.
- There is no French notarial pack yet: the core engine and the legal pack cover common identifiers, and office-specific references are added as folder rules. A notarial pack exists for Morocco.
- A sale price, a date and a town can point to a property, and so to its owners: review the plan before anything is sent.
A notary's file is everything you should not send
A sale, estate or settlement file gathers the most identifying things about a person: name, date and place of birth, marital property regime, social security number, a copy of an ID document, bank statements, tax notices, the property's address, family ties, sometimes an illness or a separation. Pasted as it is into a chatbot, it goes to the AI provider, under the provider's terms.
Yet the AI does not need to know who is selling, inheriting or divorcing to check a chain of title, order a line of succession or review a clause. It needs the facts, the dates and the law. Hidden Tokens separates the two, on the office's own computer.
What the rules say: the French example
Notarial secrecy is set by each country's law. France, where the rules were rewritten in 2024, is a good example of how strict it is:
- The notaries' code of conduct (Decree 2023-1297 of 28 December 2023, Article 8): the notary and everyone under their authority are bound by professional secrecy, which is "general and absolute".
- The Criminal Code (Article 226-13) punishes the disclosure of secret information by a person who holds it through their profession with one year's imprisonment and a €15,000 fine.
- The professional rules of the notariat, approved by the order of 29 January 2024 and in force since 1 February 2024:
- Article 8.1: secrecy covers everything that came to the notary's knowledge in the course of their duties, and extends to deeds, documents and correspondence, electronic included; the notary makes sure staff and service providers are instructed in this duty;
- Article 10: the notary complies with the French Data Protection Act and the GDPR, and every office must appoint a data protection officer;
- Article 22.1: the notary takes every step to secure their IT installation and environment.
- The GDPR lists pseudonymisation among expected security measures (Article 32) and requires data protection by design (Article 25). See AI in France: the GDPR and professional secrecy.
None of these texts mentions generative AI. We do not draw a rule from them on your behalf; we note that working on a coded copy reduces what the AI receives to codes, and that this can be proven on the computer. For lawyers, the French bar council has published an AI grid and guide, covered in our CNB compliance file; their logic (pseudonymise before the tool, don't settle for a provider's promise) is useful context, without binding notaries.
Seven notarial tasks with AI, and what to code
1. Draft deeds
Sale, gift, lease, company deed: the AI adapts a template, checks that descriptions are consistent, spots a missing clause. Code: the parties, civil status, addresses, ID numbers, company numbers, IBANs. Keep readable: the vocabulary of property rights, easements, conditions precedent, legal references. Drafting and executing the deed remain the notary's: the AI prepares, it signs nothing.
2. Preliminary sale agreements
Reviewing a draft sent by an estate agent, comparing its conditions with the office's draft, listing missing documents: structure and clauses are enough. Parties, the agency, addresses and the escrow bank details become codes. Watch the price, date and town: together, they can point to the property (see below).
3. Estates
A succession with representation, earlier gifts to bring into account, six heirs including two minors: the AI helps order the branches and the shares. Each heir keeps the same code in every document, so "NAME-003, daughter of NAME-001" makes sense from one document to the next. Family ties and estate vocabulary stay readable.
4. Marital property settlements and partitions
The settlement often lives in a spreadsheet: assets, debts, reimbursements, equalisation payment. Identifier columns are coded; sensitive financial columns are protected by default, and you open the ones the analysis needs. For a total, an equalisation payment or a split on protected amounts, the AI describes the calculation and Hidden Tokens runs it on the computer, with the real values. See anonymise an Excel file for AI.
5. Civil status
Dates of birth are always coded, and so are social security numbers (checksum verified). Places of birth and towns stay readable by default; the "generalise" option codes them and turns an age into an age band, when the context makes someone recognisable.
6. ID documents
A copy of an ID card or passport is a scan: it is read on the computer by built-in text recognition, with no online service, and you proofread the recognised text before it is used. ID numbers are coded. A photo or screenshot can also be given black boxes, on the computer, before it is attached to anything.
7. Bank statements
Proving the source of funds, matching transfers to a price: IBANs and cards are coded, names in transaction labels too when recognised, and amounts follow the column's setting. Review the plan: a transaction label can hold a reference the engine does not know.
Prices, land records and open data: the clue that points to a property
In France, the tax administration publishes the "Demandes de valeurs foncières" open dataset, drawn from notarial deeds and cadastral information, for the last five years: date of sale, price, address and cadastral references, without the parties' names. A draft agreement that keeps the price, the signing date and the town in clear therefore gives the AI enough to find the sale.
Our advice: code the property's address (the engine does), add a pattern rule for cadastral references such as "section AB n° 123", and, when the price is not needed for the task, a rule that codes it. Hidden Tokens flags indirect clues in the plan; it does not guess that a price plus a date points to a house.
What Hidden Tokens codes for a notary's office
| Coded | Kept readable |
|---|---|
| Parties, heirs, spouses, agencies, companies | Property rights, easements, joint ownership, usufruct |
| Dates of birth, social security numbers (checksum verified) | Family ties and estate vocabulary |
| ID, passport and driving-licence numbers | Legal and tax references |
| Addresses, emails, phone numbers | Dates of the deed and deadlines |
| IBANs, bank details, cards; SIRET and SIREN with the legal pack | Amounts in the text, unless a rule says otherwise |
| Cadastral references and the office's file numbers, through a folder rule | Institutions (land registry, cadastre) |
In Morocco, the notarial pack also codes land-title, registration-application, minute and repertory numbers, adoul deed references and property names.
Step by step
- One watched folder per matter. Install the app (Mac or Windows, 14-day trial, no account) and point it at the folder. Word, PDF, Excel, scans and text files are coded into a
Hidden-Tokens/subfolder next to the originals. - The office's rules. Turn on the legal pack (or the notarial pack in Morocco); add a pattern rule for your cadastral references and file-number format (with a made-up example), and a rule that keeps the office's name readable.
- Review the plan. Nothing is written before you approve: the plan shows what will be coded, what will stay readable and the indirect clues.
- Work in the AI of your choice on the coded copies: Claude Desktop through the connector, or upload the copy to ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot; the extension also codes what you type on those sites.
- Get the draft back in clear. Hidden Tokens puts the real names back into the Word file the AI produced, formatting intact, on the computer.
- Review the deed. The AI can get a share or a date wrong; decoding restores names, not accuracy.
To try it without installing anything, the free anonymizer codes a text in your browser; for a whole document, see anonymise a Word document for AI or anonymise a contract before AI. For notes of a signing meeting or a call, taken up afterwards: anonymise a meeting transcript.
The limits, plainly
- Pseudonymisation is not anonymisation. The office holds the key: for it, the data remains personal data.
- Indirect clues are flagged, not all rewritten. A price, a date, a town, a rare profession: the decision to generalise is yours.
- No French notarial pack yet. Office-specific identifiers go through your folder rules; a reference that neither the engine nor a rule knows can stay readable, hence the review of the plan.
- Hidden Tokens protects what goes through it. Text pasted without the extension, a file attached by hand, or typing inside deed-drafting software goes through no lock.
- It certifies nothing. It supports your compliance, does not replace it, and stands in neither for your chamber nor for your data protection officer.
Further reading: how to use ChatGPT or Claude with client data, how to redact a Word or Excel file before AI and what an AI confidentiality charter must contain.
Frequently asked questions
Can a notary use ChatGPT or Claude on a client file?
The texts we cite do not deal with generative AI specifically. They do say that secrecy covers everything that came to the notary's knowledge in the course of their duties, documents and electronic correspondence included. So the question to ask is what the AI receives. On a coded copy, it receives facts, dates and law, not the clients' identity. For the professional-conduct assessment, your chamber of notaries remains the reference.
Does Hidden Tokens have a pack for notaries?
For Morocco, yes: the notarial pack codes land-title numbers (with their registry index), registration-application, minute and repertory numbers, adoul deed references and property names ("the property known as …"), and keeps the land registry, property rights, estates and deed taxation readable. For France, not yet: the core engine already codes names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, IBANs, cards, ID numbers, social security numbers (checksum verified) and dates of birth, and the legal pack adds SIRET and SIREN numbers. Add cadastral references and your file-number format as folder rules.
Are the amounts in a deed coded?
In a spreadsheet, amounts are set column by column, and sensitive financial columns (wealth, balances) are protected by default. In the text of a deed, a price stays readable by default; if it can identify the property, add a rule that codes it. For a calculation on protected amounts (equalisation payment, duties, shares), the AI describes the calculation and Hidden Tokens runs it on the computer.
Pseudonymisation or anonymisation?
Reversible pseudonymisation: the key stays on the office's computer, which is what lets you hand back a draft deed with the real names. For the office, which holds the key, the data remains personal data (GDPR, Article 4(5)). See pseudonymisation vs anonymisation.
Can the vendor see the office's files?
No. Hidden Tokens has no server: files, key and log stay on the computer, and an office's shared registry lives encrypted on its own file share. Coding and decoding work with the network off.
Does Hidden Tokens make the office compliant?
No. It equips compliance and documents it: reversible pseudonymisation, human review of the plan, a log of what the AI received. Choosing the AI provider, the impact assessment with your data protection officer and reviewing every deed remain the notary's job.