Lowell Deeds

Anytime I go to Home Depot or Shaw’s Supermarket, I usually end up in the self-service checkout line. For a long time I avoided the self-serve lines because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by not knowing what I was doing. One day I had no choice and it turned out to be pretty easy. The efficiencies of these systems got me thinking about their applicability at the registry of deeds. We’ve now moved from the idea phase to the drawing board phase. What I envision is making use of electronic recording technology to set up a “customer submission terminal” at the registry. When a walk-in customer arrives, the customer would sit down at one of these terminals and its attached scanner and go through the electronic recording process only in this scenario, a registry employee would be standing by to offer assistance (but not to do the work for the person). Unlike electronic recording where the fees are paid through bank transfer, the customer could pay us directly by cash or check just as in the normal recording process. Why would anyone use an electronic recording terminal whent he recording counter was only steps away? Like at Home Depot, if there’s a long line waiting for a human being to process your paperwork, you might want to expedite the recording by doing it yourself. Once the technology and the work flow is perfected, we could also point the electronic recording terminal at other registries that were accepting e-recordings, thereby creating a universal satellite office that would handle recording at multiple registries with very little overhead.