The Hungarian Notariat and the Challenges of the 21st Century

The topic of our presentation is how people working in the Hungarian legal professions, especially the notariat, reflect on the social challenges and turning points of the late modernity, including global challenges such as technological developments, the possibilities of using artificial intelligence, or the specific Hungarian, regional, post-socialist societal and vocational challenges.

Our presentation will be based on the analysis of narrative career story interviews conducted in the research project Women in the legal professions in Hungary, in which 17 notaries were interviewed. In the presentation we will discuss the turning points in the history of the Hungarian notarial profession, which is important for understanding how it follows political changes like a "litmus paper". In this respect the introduction (reintroduction) of private notariat from 1992 and its impact on people working as notaries is of particular importance.

In our presentation, we will focus on the types of career paths and generations of notaries that have emerged since 1992, and we will examine how the above mentioned challenges are interpreted in the narratives and constructions of professional identity of people belonging to different types and generations.