Notary in France: law degree, the DESN and careers

The notary is one of those jobs whose public image, the signing of a property sale or the settling of an estate, hides a far broader legal reality. Many secondary-school students drawn to law hesitate between lawyer and notary without seeing what sets them apart: where a lawyer (in France an avocat) defends one side, the notary acts on behalf of the state to make certain legal acts incontestable.

This profile describes the French route, and it starts with the misconception to clear up, which fits in one phrase: the notary is not merely a private lawyer, but a public and ministerial officer (officier public et ministériel). The notary holds a charge conferred by public authority, is appointed by the Minister of Justice (the garde des Sceaux), and gives official authenticity to the deeds they receive. That distinctive status explains both the length of the training and the strict regulation of where notaries may set up. The sections below cover the exact French pathway, from the baccalaureate to the diploma, taking in the recent reform that unified the entry routes, and a closing section looks honestly at how far this qualification travels for international and expatriate families.

The notary profession at a glance

A notary is a legal professional carrying out a public-service duty: drafting and authenticating deeds (property sales, marriage contracts, gifts, inheritance settlements, company articles, loans) and advising clients on those transactions. By adding their signature and seal, the notary gives a deed binding, enforceable force that an ordinary private contract does not have.

The field is law, with a strong focus on wealth and family matters: property, family, business, town planning. A principal or partner notary works in private practice, yet is appointed by the state and attached to an office (an étude) whose number and location are regulated. There are also salaried notaries, employed by an office rather than holding their own charge. The notary should not be confused with the notary’s clerk (clerc de notaire, today often called a collaborator), who prepares deeds under the notary’s responsibility but does not authenticate them.

The required qualification level is high: a master’s degree in law (bac+5), then a specific professional diploma. For scale: as of 31 October 2025, 12,361 notaries were practising in self-employed private practice in France (source: French Ministry of Justice, the OPM portal for public and ministerial officers). The profession has opened up since the 2015 law known as the “loi Macron”, which introduced regulated freedom of establishment and markedly increased the number of offices and practitioners.

Daily life: duties and settings

A notary’s day blends law, advice and human relationships, often around important moments in clients’ lives:

• Receiving and advising: listening to a project (a purchase, a transfer, a marriage, a business start-up), explaining the rules, the costs and the legal and tax consequences.
• Drafting authenticated deeds: sale contracts, gifts, wills, marriage contracts, certificates of inheritance after a death, company articles.
• Checking and securing: verifying the parties’ identity, ownership of a property, the absence of easements or debts, the heirs’ agreement.
• Authenticating and keeping: signing the deed, giving it legal force, then holding the original (the “minute”) for decades.
• Completing the formalities: registration with the land registry, calculating and paying the taxes, filing.
• Running an office: because a principal notary is also a business owner who employs staff and carries personal liability.

The main workplace is the notary’s office, from a small provincial étude to a large specialised urban firm. The pace is steadier than that of a litigation lawyer, but it has sharp peaks (property signings, complex inheritance files). The notary works with clients, banks, estate agents, the tax authorities and the land-registry services.

A typical day (a made-up example)

Sofiane, an assistant notary for two years in an office in a mid-sized town, starts the morning by re-reading a preliminary sale agreement due to be signed at the end of the day. He then meets a couple to organise a gift to their children, taking the time to explain the tax that applies, and checks the documents in a pending inheritance file. In the afternoon he runs a property signing and prepares a marriage contract. This example is fictional and only serves to illustrate the alternation between advice, drafting and signing.

Studying to become a notary: from the baccalaureate to the diploma

At school, no subject speciality is compulsory to enter a law degree, but some combinations help: history-geography, geopolitics and political science (HGGSP), economics and social sciences (SES) or humanities, literature and philosophy (HLP). As with all law studies, what really counts is command of written expression, rigour and a taste for precise reasoning. Notarial work adds an appetite for numbers, wealth matters and the advisory relationship.

The pathway is built in stages:

1. Bachelor’s degree in law (3 years, entry to the first year through Parcoursup, France’s national admissions platform). A demanding course, with a notable first-year failure rate.
2. Master’s degree in law (2 years, bac+5), preferably specialising in notarial law. Holders of an approved notarial-law master’s move straight on to the professional diploma; holders of another law master’s must obtain a favourable opinion from the national selection board.
3. Higher diploma in notarial studies (Diplôme d’études supérieures de notariat, or DESN): it lasts 24 months on a work-study contract inside an office, during which the student holds the status of trainee notary (notaire stagiaire). The training includes taught modules and the writing of a report or dissertation.

This is where the key reform to know comes in. Since 1 September 2024, the DESN has replaced and merged the two former routes: the university route, which awarded the DSN (Diplôme supérieur du notariat), and the institute-based professional route, which awarded the DN (Diplôme de notaire). Neither diploma takes new entrants any more; only students already engaged in them finish their course (source: decree no. 2022-1298 of 7 October 2022, Légifrance; INFN). The exact name of today’s entry diploma is therefore the higher diploma in notarial studies (DESN), awarded within the Institut national des formations notariales (INFN), France’s national institute for notarial training, in partnership with the universities.

Holding the DESN is not enough to practise as a principal notary: you then have to be appointed by the Minister of Justice and attached to an office, either by taking over or joining an existing office, or by creating one in a zone where that is allowed (see below). You can also practise as a salaried notary within an office.

Typical pathway

Careers, entry and pay

The market is real but regulated. Since the 2015 law, the profession has widened: the 2023-2025 establishment map (order of 27 February 2024) distinguishes free-establishment zones from zones of controlled establishment overseen by the Minister of Justice after advice from the competition authority, and it set a target of creating several hundred offices and appointing principal or partner notaries (source: French Ministry of Justice, OPM portal). In free zones, competing applications are settled by an electronic random draw. An honest caveat: the liberalising trend is tightening, since the draft of the next map (2026-2031) points to a rollback of free-establishment zones and of new office creations.

Entry after the DESN often goes first through a post as a salaried notary or a collaborator, before reaching principal or partner status later on. A starting salaried notary falls under the minimum rates of the notarial sector’s collective agreement: the floor sits around 3,500 euros gross per month, rising towards 3,800 to 4,500 euros gross with experience, with higher levels in the Paris region (source: notarial pay scale, point value revised on 1 March 2025).

A principal or partner notary, by contrast, takes a share of the office’s profits rather than a salary: their income is on average much higher, but also very variable, depending on the office’s size, location and activity. You therefore have to separate the salaried start of a career, with legible income, from setting up as a principal, which is more lucrative but requires an appointment and the takeover or creation of an office. It is a career with solid prospects, but full access to it stays long and selective.

Who the job suits: qualities and interests

The work suits people who enjoy applied, concrete law, documentary rigour, precision, and contact with clients at important moments in their lives. It calls for composure around money and family matters (handling significant sums and sensitive stakes), great reliability (an error in a deed engages the notary’s liability), a sense of confidentiality and genuine ease with people. An appetite for tax and numbers is a real plus.

A few honest counter-indications: an aversion to dense legal reading and painstaking tasks makes both the course and the job a grind; a need for advocacy and confrontation fits the lawyer’s job better than notarial work, which is more geared to advice and securing transactions; impatience clashes with a long pathway and a regulated route into practice. This is not a “fast” road to a high income: it is a demanding profession, over a long horizon.

To check that this profile genuinely fits, it helps to weigh these qualities against your own interests before committing to a law degree. An orientation review helps tell a lasting interest apart from a mere image of the job.

Bridges and changing course

Law remains one of the most flexible fields there is, and starting a law degree without becoming a notary is not a failure. The bachelor’s and master’s in law open onto many careers: in-house lawyer, avocat (the French litigating and advising lawyer), judge (through the national school for the judiciary), judicial commissioner (the former bailiff role), public administration, property, banking, wealth management.

Notarial work itself connects with neighbouring jobs. Many office collaborators started as notary’s clerks before going back to study towards the DESN, and a notarial-law master’s can also lead to wealth advisory work without going through the notarial diploma. To place notarial work next to the lawyer’s profession, see our career profile on the French lawyer (avocat). And if the hesitation is more broadly about the type of institution and course, our comparison of universities, engineering schools and business schools sets out the main training logics.

An international perspective

This is where the French notary differs sharply from most careers in this guide, and where honesty matters most. The notaire is a national regulated profession, tied to French civil law and to delegated state authority. It is not one of the seven so-called sectoral professions that enjoy automatic recognition across the EU and the wider European Economic Area under Directive 2005/36/EC (those are doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, pharmacists, veterinary surgeons and architects). A French notarial qualification does not automatically let you practise as a notary anywhere else, inside or outside the EU.

Two features make notarial work a special case. First, the job barely exists in the same form elsewhere. The French notaire is a civil-law notary: a public officer who drafts binding official deeds and holds part of the state’s authority. In common-law countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States or most of the Commonwealth, a notary public is a much narrower role, mostly witnessing and authenticating signatures. The two share a name, not a job. The closest common-law equivalents to what a French notary actually does (conveyancing, probate, family settlements) are handled by solicitors, so a career does not simply transpose from one system to the other.

Second, even within the EU the notarial profession is treated apart. EU law required France to open access to notary posts to nationals of other member states, but recognising a qualification and being appointed to a French charge are separate, heavily regulated steps, and notaries appointed by an official act of government sit outside parts of the ordinary free-movement rules for services. In short, an EU national can aim for the French profession, but a French notarial diploma is not a passport to practise as a notary in another country.

So who is the French route right for? It makes sense for a family already inside the French or AEFE school system, for a teenager sitting the French baccalaureate, and above all for someone who intends to practise in France under French law. If the plan is instead to build a legal career in the United Kingdom, the United States or elsewhere in the common-law world, the French notary route is a poor fit, and it is better to look from the outset at the local qualifications (a solicitor or attorney path, for example). Unlike a health or engineering qualification, this diploma is deliberately, structurally national.

Key takeaways

• Status: the notary is a public and ministerial officer, appointed by the Minister of Justice; only the notary can give official authenticity to the deeds they sign.
• Required diploma: a master’s degree in law (bac+5), preferably specialising in notarial law, then the higher diploma in notarial studies (DESN), 24 months on a work-study contract.
• Reform to know: since 1 September 2024, the DESN has replaced and merged the DSN (university route) and the DN (professional route), which no longer take new entrants.
• Regulated establishment: where you can set up depends on a national map splitting free zones (with a random draw) from controlled zones; you can also take over or join an existing office.
• Pay: a starting salaried notary earns around 3,500 euros gross per month, rising with experience; a principal notary takes a share of the profits, higher but very variable.
• International: a national civil-law profession with no automatic recognition abroad; the French notaire differs fundamentally from a common-law notary public, and the qualification does not transpose.

Going further

• The career profiles hub of the Axiom guide
• Career profile: the French lawyer (avocat)
• University, engineering school and business school: the differences
• Higher diploma in notarial studies (DESN), Institut national des formations notariales
• Map of notary establishment zones, OPM portal of the French Ministry of Justice
• European Commission: Regulated Professions Database (Directive 2005/36/EC)

Written by the Axiom Orientation team.