Who must conduct a US home closing? Attorney states and escrow states

In this article

Written by

Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →

A home sale in the United States ends at a closing: the deed and the loan documents are signed, the money moves, and the deed is recorded. Who is allowed to run that meeting is not a federal question. Each state decides it, and in a group of states the answer comes from the rules on the unauthorised practice of law, written by the state's supreme court or its bar.

This guide takes three states where a lawyer must be involved, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, and reads what their courts and bars have actually said: which steps belong to a lawyer, whether a notary may simply witness the signatures, whether the lawyer may be somewhere else, and whose account the money passes through. It then sets them against Washington, a state where licensed escrow agents and limited practice officers close transactions. It describes the position as read in October 2026, from the opinions and statutes named in each section. It is a description of general rules, and how they apply depends on the transaction.

Supreme Court of South Carolina, Opinion No. 27727 (2017); North Carolina General Statutes, section 45A-4; Revised Code of Washington, section 18.44.201.

Why the practice of law decides who runs a closing

None of the three attorney states studied here has a statute that says "a lawyer must close every home sale". The rule arrives by another road. Each state restricts the practice of law to people licensed by its bar, and the question is which parts of a closing count as practising law.

The answers show how wide that can be. In Georgia, the Supreme Court noted in its 2003 decision on UPL Advisory Opinion 2003-2, read for this guide on a copy of the published decision carried by the legal publisher FindLaw, that the state code defines the practice of law to include conveyancing, the preparation of legal instruments, the rendering of opinions on title and the giving of legal advice, and that this policy dates from at least 1932. In North Carolina, the State Bar's Authorized Practice Advisory Opinion 2002-1 describes a residential closing as several phases, among them the title work, the preparation of documents and the disbursement of funds, and then sorts the tasks inside those phases into legal work and ministerial work. In South Carolina, the Supreme Court has built the rule case by case since 1987.

Georgia: only a lawyer may close

On 10 November 2003 the Supreme Court of Georgia, in a per curiam decision with all the Justices concurring, approved an opinion that its Standing Committee on the Unlicensed Practice of Law had issued on 22 April 2003. The holding, as the decision states it, is that only a licensed Georgia attorney may prepare or facilitate the execution of a deed of conveyance. The deeds covered are named: warranty deeds, limited warranty deeds, quitclaim deeds, security deeds and deeds to secure debt.

The decision also dealt with a practice the Court called the witness-only closing. A footnote defines it: a notary or signing agent who is not a party presides over the signing while claiming to act only as a witness and a notary. The Court declined to open the door to it.

It said it was "unpersuaded that the time has come to change the policy" on lay conveyances or witness-only closings. The reason it gave is about recourse. A lawyer who closes a transaction badly answers for it through a malpractice claim or bar discipline. Where a non-lawyer fails to close properly, the decision says, the public has little or no recourse.

Georgia: a lawyer cannot be a witness only

The 2003 decision closed the route for non-lawyers. A second question followed: could a lawyer be hired to do what the notary could not, that is, attend, watch the signatures and do nothing else? Formal Advisory Opinion No. 13-1, which the Supreme Court of Georgia approved in a per curiam decision of 22 September 2014, read here on the copy published by the legal publisher Justia, answers three questions that the Court had set out in its order of 19 May 2014 granting review.

The first is whether a lawyer breaches the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct by conducting a witness-only closing. The answer is yes. The opinion describes national lenders engaging lawyers to preside over signings without reviewing the documents or giving legal advice. It says that every closing in which the parties do not act for themselves must be handled by a lawyer, and that a lawyer who claims to act only as a witness misrepresents the role.

The second is whether the lawyer may rely on documents drawn up elsewhere. Here the answer is yes, with conditions. The closing lawyer "must review all documents to be used in the transaction", must resolve errors, ambiguities and title defects, and may use documents prepared by others "after ensuring their accuracy", revising them where needed and adopting them as the lawyer's own work. The opinion treats the closing as a series of events (the title opinion, the preparation of deeds, the execution, the recording, the handling of funds) and says the lawyer must be in control of that process "from beginning to end". Paralegal and clerical work may be delegated, but under the Georgia code the attorney keeps "full professional and direct responsibility to his clients". Title companies may examine records and prepare abstracts; the opinion says that does not allow them to conduct the closing.

The third question concerns the money, and it is covered in the section on who holds the funds below.

Georgia: can the lawyer attend by video?

The 2003 decision recalled that two earlier formal advisory opinions, numbered 86-5 and 00-3, had required the physical presence of an attorney. Formal Advisory Opinion No. 23-1 says both dealt with a paralegal at the table and a lawyer reachable only by telephone, and found that arrangement improper because it encouraged the unauthorised practice of law. The newer question is whether a lawyer who appears on a screen is present.

The Formal Advisory Opinion Board of the State Bar of Georgia issued Opinion No. 23-1 on 23 January 2025. It asks whether a lawyer can fulfil the duty of presence, the duty to oversee and take part in the execution of the instruments conveying title, and the duty of control required by Opinion No. 13-1, when using video conference. Its answer is yes, "so long as the lawyer is in control of the closing process from beginning to end". The opinion states that, in real estate transactions, "the use of video conference technology is the equivalent of physical presence".

The opinion attaches conditions. The lawyer keeps full professional and direct responsibility for the whole transaction. The technology must not be used to advance the unauthorised practice of law, for instance by handing the lawyer's duties to a non-lawyer. Remote notarisation may be used only "if authorized by applicable State or Federal legislation"; the opinion does not itself say whether Georgia law authorises it, and that point is not settled by anything read for this guide.

The standing of the opinion matters too. According to the document, it was filed with the Supreme Court of Georgia on 22 May 2025, the State Bar asked the Court for discretionary review on 28 May 2025, and the Court denied that request on 1 July 2025. The opinion says of itself that it "is binding on the requestor and the State Bar of Georgia" and that the Court treats it as persuasive authority only.

South Carolina: five steps under a lawyer's supervision

South Carolina's rule comes from its Supreme Court, and the most complete statement of it is Opinion No. 27727, filed on 19 July 2017, in which the author's four colleagues on the bench concurred. The opinion calls State v. Buyers Service Co., decided in 1987, the seminal case. There, the 2017 opinion recounts, a title company carried out entire transactions with no attorney oversight, and the Court found that it was practising law without a licence. The 1987 decision identified four steps that belong to a lawyer. A decision of 2006 added a fifth.

The South Carolina Bar's Ethics Advisory Opinion 26-01 restates the rule in one sentence: each step of a residential transaction is the practice of law and must be performed or supervised by a lawyer licensed in South Carolina. It groups recording and disbursement under one heading while referring to five steps. It adds two practical points. No single lawyer has to perform every step. The lawyer who handles the closing must, however, confirm that the other steps were dealt with by a South Carolina lawyer, and, citing an earlier opinion numbered 09-01, may not rely on a non-lawyer's blanket assurance that they were.

The Court's 2017 opinion describes two decisions that mark the limits. In a decision of 2003, as the 2017 opinion recounts it, the Court said a lawyer may work alongside a lender or a title company provided the lawyer supervises the title search and the loan documents, reviews and corrects the documents independently, supervises the closing and gives the legal advice, and supervises the recording; the same decision brought refinancings inside the rule. In a 2011 decision involving Matrix Financial Services Corporation, a lender was found to have practised law without authority by engaging a non-lawyer to search the title, prepare the documents and close a refinance with no attorney supervision.

South Carolina: how much lawyer is enough

Opinion No. 27727 is the test of how far that supervision can be spread across a national lender's process. The case reached the Court in its original jurisdiction as a request for a declaratory judgment about the refinance process of Quicken Loans and Title Source, which the opinion describes as a provider of settlement services and title insurance. A Special Referee took evidence and recommended a finding of unauthorised practice. The Court rejected that recommendation.

The process, as the opinion sets it out, ran as follows. Borrowers were told they could choose their own counsel; the opinion notes that a South Carolina statute requires mortgage lenders to ascertain the borrower's preference for legal counsel. Where the borrower had none, Quicken Loans engaged Title Source. A non-attorney abstractor pulled the county records, and a South Carolina attorney reviewed the abstract and digitally signed a title review certificate. The loan documents were prepared mainly by the two companies and then reviewed, and corrected where necessary, by the closing attorneys. Those attorneys met the borrowers in person, explained the documents and supervised the signing. They then authorised the companies to record and to disburse, and received a disbursement ledger and copies of the recorded documents.

The Court held that this was not the unauthorised practice of law, because licensed South Carolina attorneys were involved at each critical step. The opinion says the aim running through the Court's decisions is to protect the public, and that once attorney involvement is sufficient the Court should "stay its hand and let the marketplace control".

The Bar's Opinion 26-01 applies the same logic to home equity lines of credit for which a lender requires neither a title search nor title insurance. The committee's answer is that a lawyer may attend the closing and supervise recording and disbursement without breaching the rules, whether or not a title examination is carried out. Whether the lawyer could later be liable for a title defect is a question the committee declined to answer, describing it as a matter of the standard of care.

North Carolina: the lawyer does the legal work, a layperson may run the table

North Carolina draws the line inside the closing itself. The State Bar's Authorized Practice Advisory Opinion 2002-1, adopted on 24 January 2003 and revised on 26 January 2012, begins with a flat rule: a non-lawyer may not handle a residential real estate closing for one or more of the parties. It then lists eleven activities that are the practice of law when done by a non-lawyer who is not under the direct supervision of an active member of the State Bar, and says the list is not exhaustive. They include:

• abstracting title or giving an opinion on it, and explaining the legal status of the title or of the exceptions in a title insurance commitment (a title insurer may explain its own underwriting decision);
• advising on matters in a survey that call for legal judgment, or on how to take title and what follows from it;
• giving legal advice on rights and obligations under the purchase agreement, the note, a prepayment penalty, the right of rescission or the deed of trust;
• drafting legal documents, helping to complete them, or choosing among legal forms;
• deciding that the conditions of the purchase agreement or of the loan have been met, that the deed and deed of trust may be recorded after the title update, and that the funds may be disbursed under the state's Good Funds Settlement Act.

The second half of the opinion is what separates North Carolina from Georgia. A non-lawyer who is not supervised by a lawyer may present and identify the closing documents, direct the parties where to sign, check that the documents are properly executed, and receive and disburse the closing funds, provided none of the reserved activities is performed. The opinion calls these limited ministerial tasks. A person doing them is not "handling the closing": a lawyer still has to provide the legal services, and the party selects that lawyer.

The lawyer does not have to be in the room. The opinion says physical presence is not required and that signing and disbursement can take place by mail, by email or by other electronic means. Two statutes it cites keep a lawyer in the chain all the same. Under the state's insurance law, a title insurance policy may be issued only after an opinion on title from a licensed North Carolina attorney who is not an employee or agent of the insurer. Under the Good Funds Settlement Act, funds may not be disbursed until the deed and any deed of trust are recorded, which the opinion says requires physical delivery to the Register of Deeds during business hours in most counties.

Washington: escrow agents and limited practice officers

Washington shows the other model, as its regulators describe it. There, the closing is treated as a regulated escrow business with a limited licence for the document work.

The Revised Code of Washington, chapter 18.44, defines an escrow as a transaction in which money, documents or other things of value are delivered to a third person to be held until a specified event or condition occurs and then released under instructions. An escrow agent is a person in the business of doing that for compensation, and must be licensed. The Department of Financial Institutions says escrow companies, agents and officers are regulated by its Division of Consumer Services.

Lawyers are not excluded from this model; they are one exemption among several. Section 18.44.021 exempts banks and similar institutions, title insurance companies and licensed title insurance agents, court-supervised receivers and trustees, real estate brokers who are not paid for escrow services, and attorneys, on condition that the escrow work is done in the course of practising law, through a publicly identified law practice, with the funds in a trust account under the Washington Supreme Court's rules.

The legal documents are handled by a different licence. The Washington State Bar Association, on a page updated on 2 March 2026, describes a limited practice officer as a person licensed by the Washington Supreme Court under Rule 12 of the Admission and Practice Rules to "select, prepare, and complete approved documents" for closing a loan, a sale or another transfer of real or personal property. The forms are approved by the Limited Practice Board. The association says these officers are bound by their own rules of professional conduct, are held to the same standard of care as a lawyer for the services they are authorised to give, and may not delegate their duties to someone without the licence.

Who holds the money in each model

Georgia. Opinion No. 13-1 answers its third question with a yes. Under Rule 1.15(II) of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, funds a lawyer receives in a closing must be deposited into and disbursed from the lawyer's trust account or the trust account of another lawyer. The opinion says a lawyer breaches the rules by delivering closing proceeds to a title company or a third-party settlement company for it to disburse. It notes one statutory route outside the lawyer's account: a provision of the Georgia code, section 44-14-13, which the opinion says allows the lender to disburse funds. The text of that section was not read for this guide.

South Carolina. The Court went the other way in 2017. Describing its 2006 decision, it wrote that it had not required loan proceeds to pass through a closing attorney's trust account and had left the matter to the supervising attorneys; it had declined to "specify the form that supervision must take". In a footnote, the 2017 opinion modified a decision of 2016 to the extent that it had required the closing attorney to use the attorney's own trust account.

North Carolina. The State Bar's opinion lets an unsupervised non-lawyer receive and disburse closing funds, and says it does not decide who must hold them; where a lawyer does, the Rules of Professional Conduct govern the handling of those fiduciary funds. The Good Funds Settlement Act, Chapter 45A of the General Statutes, then regulates whoever acts as settlement agent, a term it defines as the person or entity responsible for conducting the settlement and disbursing the proceeds. The Act applies only to dwellings for one to four families and to lots restricted to residential use. The agent must hold the money in a trust or escrow account, must record the deed and any deed of trust, and may pay nothing beyond recording costs, excise tax and fees before recording. It may disburse only against collected funds or a short list of instruments: certified, government and bank cheques, cheques on a North Carolina attorney's or a licensed real estate broker's trust account, a licensed mortgage lender's cheque, and personal or commercial cheques totalling no more than US$5,000 per closing. Section 45A-8 makes closing funds fiduciary funds and applies the embezzlement statute to the agent.

A party who breaks the Act owes anyone who suffers a loss the actual damages and reasonable attorneys' fees, plus the greater of US$1,000 or double the interest payable on the loan for its first 60 days. As a worked example, in which every figure is an assumption made for this guide and not taken from the Act: on a loan of US$300,000 at an assumed 6 per cent a year, counted as simple interest over a 365-day year, 60 days of interest come to US$2,958.90, and double that is US$5,917.81, which is the higher amount. The Act as read does not say how the interest is to be counted, so the day count is an assumption too. The Act says a breach does not affect the validity of the documents signed.

Washington. The protection is financial and regulatory. Section 18.44.201 requires a licensed escrow agent to carry a fidelity bond of US$1,000,000 in aggregate with a deductible of no more than US$10,000, errors and omissions cover of at least US$50,000 or the same sum in cash or securities, and a surety bond of US$10,000 unless the fidelity bond has no deductible. Running an escrow business without a licence is a misdemeanour under section 18.44.171, punishable by up to 90 days' imprisonment, a fine of up to US$100 for each day of the violation, or both. The chapter's own trust account section could not be read for this guide.

What this means for fees

Fees are the part of the comparison where the sources read for this guide say least. None of the opinions and statutes sets or reports a fee for a closing lawyer, an escrow agent or a limited practice officer, and this guide gives no fee figures for any of the four states.

What the sources do show is what the fee pays for. In Georgia, Opinion No. 13-1 does not allow the lawyer a reduced role. In South Carolina, the 2017 opinion accepts a division of labour in which a company prepares, records and pays out while lawyers review, attend and authorise. In North Carolina, the legal and the ministerial services can come from different providers, with the party choosing the lawyer. In Washington, the escrow agent and the limited practice officer provide commercial services under a licence.

A closing has the same parts everywhere: title, documents, signatures, recording, money. The states differ on which of those parts need a lawyer.

At federal level, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, on a page last reviewed on 11 September 2024, lists the kinds of charges paid at closing, among them appraisal fees, title insurance, government taxes and prepaid expenses, without figures. It says the buyer generally pays all the costs of the transaction, and that the seller may pay some depending on the contract or state law.

Several points stay open after this reading: no fee data by state, the Georgia statute on disbursement, the Washington trust account section, and the standing of the Georgia video conference opinion, which the state's Supreme Court has not approved.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →