Prestige, a company founded in 2015 by Jennifer Garland, has announced a new estate planning signing support service that combines document printing, binder assembly, and delivery by a notary to the signer. Offered through Prestige Notaries, the service extends the company's existing signing coordination to include preparation of the organized document package used during trust signings. The move matters because it shifts labor-intensive preparation work away from law firm staff and into the signing assignment itself, potentially reducing overhead and freeing attorneys to focus on client matters.
The service originated with an estate planning firm that was assembling tabbed trust binders internally and paying to ship them. Prestige took over ordering binders and tabs, printing documents, organizing and sealing materials, and arranging for a notary to bring the completed package to the signer. Under this arrangement, the firm no longer needed to assemble binders or absorb shipping costs. The workflow brings preparation tasks into the signing assignment rather than leaving them with the firm's staff. For estate planning practices, where trust signings are frequent and detail-sensitive, outsourcing these steps could standardize quality and reduce administrative burden.
This development reflects an approach described by Jennifer Garland, founder, President and CEO of Prestige Companies, who emphasizes listening to a client's specific operational needs and building support around those needs. In this case, a process created for one firm became a service offered more broadly, illustrating how service providers can productize bespoke solutions to scale them across the market.
Garland founded Prestige after working as a paralegal at the Washington State Attorney General's office and managing a mortgage company. Her mortgage industry experience exposed a need for streamlined processes and hand-vetted notaries. Prestige Notaries was established to address that need and today serves banks, corporations, and law firms, with a database of more than 260,000 notaries across all 50 states. That national footprint gives the company an advantage in coordinating multi-state signings, a common need for estate planning clients with assets in different jurisdictions.
Independent professionals are central to the company's service model. Garland describes the notaries and field agents working with Prestige as small business owners whose independence remains important to the relationship. Her approach emphasizes helping those professionals become self-sufficient contractors rather than dependent on the company. Support includes clear expectations, access to resources, and ongoing communication with the service team. This model could appeal to notaries seeking to build their own practices while gaining access to a steady stream of assignments.
Prestige Notaries maintains a foundational set of standard operating procedures across industries and clients. Training addresses those standards and their application, while ongoing conversations with the service team inform procedural changes when circumstances require them. The company pairs that structure with a consistent vetting process for every notary it places, regardless of location or assignment. Notarial law varies by state, and Prestige has built a library of state-by-state guides for its team. The guides provide a reference for jurisdiction-specific requirements without requiring team members to rely on memory. Together with training and vetting, the library forms part of the operational support behind assignments involving professionals in different states.
The company's assignment history includes complex logistical requests. For an executive attending a retreat on a remote Alaskan island, Prestige arranged for a notary and field agent to travel by float plane, remain on the island for several days, obtain the signature, and return the document on time. Flights reached the island only twice weekly. Another assignment required a notary to meet a guide and travel by snowmobile to a mile marker to reach the signer. Prestige has also coordinated a commercial signing involving 17 signers across five cities and three time zones, with signings taking place simultaneously. Such capabilities suggest the new estate planning service can handle unusual or high-stakes signings that firms might struggle to manage internally.
Administrative coordination includes shipment tracking within the platform used by Prestige, allowing the team and clients to track shipments without leaving the platform or calling a carrier. Garland's approach connects handling routine status work with preserving staff attention for assignments requiring direct personal involvement. The estate planning service applies a similar approach to the physical preparation and delivery of signing materials. The new offering combines Prestige's existing signing coordination with a defined document preparation workflow. Its scope covers binders, tabs, printed materials, organization, sealing, and delivery as described in the original client arrangement. The service places those tasks within the assignment handled by Prestige and its field professionals, rather than retaining binder assembly as an internal responsibility of the estate planning firm. For law firms weighing whether to keep binder assembly in-house, the announcement offers a turnkey alternative that could lower costs and reduce errors, while for Prestige it deepens its role in the estate planning workflow and strengthens its position in the notary services market.
