This past Tuesday was my final day as the register of deeds for the Northern Middlesex District. Most people know that the registry of deeds keeps land ownership records but details of how the office operates are only vaguely understood. While our system of land ownership developed in medieval England, the method of keeping records of that ownership emerged in 16th century Massachusetts. Although the technology used to operate this system has changed, the system in use today is the same as the one used in 1640.

Here’s how that system works: (1) all recorded documents like deeds and mortgages are reproduced in their entirety in the registry records; (2) the registry creates an index of the names in these documents to assist future landowners to find ones relevant to them; (3) the registry makes these records available to the public for research. Because this system has been in place for so long and continues to work satisfactorily, it’s unlikely to change in the future.

With that as background, here are some thoughts on my 30 years as register of deeds. In the spring of 1994, I was practicing law here in Lowell with my father, Richard P. Howe (who passed away in 2015) and my sister, Martha Howe (who remains at the Howe Law Office today). I did mostly real estate and criminal defense but after eight years of that I was ready for a change. One afternoon while walking back to our Kearney Square office from the Superior Courthouse, I glanced at a Lowell Sun newspaper vending box and saw the headline, “Register of Deeds to retire.” Edward Early, who had held the office since 1977, was not running for reelection so it would be an open seat in that fall’s state election.

I had never aspired to be register of deeds but the job seemed like it would be a good fit since three things I was passionate about – the law, history, and technology – were central to the position. I jumped into the race. So did eleven others. There were nine of us in the Democratic Primary: Walter J. “Buddy” Flynn; me; Patricia Kirwin Kielty; Edward J. Kennedy; Dennis E. McHugh; Dennis Scannell; David A. Shaughnessy; Frederick L. Simon; and Karin Theodoros. In addition, John Noonan, a land surveyor from Billerica, was running as a Republican; and Patrick O’Connor, an occasional city council candidate from Lowell, was running as an Independent. It was a vigorous campaign that grabbed the attention of the Greater Lowell political world. When the votes were cast in the September primary, I was the winner by a slim margin which grew slightly after a district-wide recount. Taking nothing for granted, I continued an all-out campaign until the November state election which I won by a more comfortable margin. I took office on January 5, 1995.

Just six weeks earlier, the registry had installed its first document scanner. The age of digital images had arrived. Fittingly, the system was by Lowell-based Wang Labs. I embraced the technology and immediately sought ways to digitize existing records and add them to the system along with newly recorded documents.

Although it’s hard to comprehend now, our biggest obstacle was a lack of electronic storage space. The Wang system utilized something called an “optical disk jukebox” which worked just like a music jukebox you would encounter in a diner or bar except this jukebox held double-sided CDs rather than vinyl records. Each of these disks held 1 gigabyte of digital images and the jukebox held 40 of them. A customer wishing to view an image on one of the registry’s “dumb” terminals (i.e., a single purpose monitor rather than a personal computer) would call for the image and a mechanical arm in the jukebox would retrieve the relevant disk and insert it into the disk reader where the requested image would be transmitted to the customer’s terminal. With real estate booming and with every mortgage having 20 or more pages, our 40 gigabytes of storage filled rapidly. It was time for a second jukebox. The low bid for 40 gigabytes of storage in 1996 was $40,000 which, considering that today you can buy triple that amount for less than $10, illustrates how rapidly technology has changed.

Next up was the Y2K crisis which many today believe was overblown hype, however, that attitude misconstrues what happened and discounts the amount of work that was required to avoid a disastrous result. Here’s a recap of what Y2K was about. Because electronic storage was at a premium in the early days of computing, code writers sought to conserve space by writing dates in computer code with six digits rather than eight, so November 20, 1909, would be encoded as 11-20-09 rather than 11-20-1909. This worked fine as long as you were in the 20th century, but with the arrival of “Year 2000” aka, Y2K, would 11-20-09 mean November 20, 1909, or November 20, 2009? The fear was that the shortcut date code would cause computers to freeze up and since more and more of everyday life was dependent on computers, a crisis would ensue. Fortunately, lawmakers took this threat seriously and appropriated ample funds for Y2K preparation.

At the registry of deeds, I was very aggressive about accessing Y2K funds. Our Wang software was written with six-digit dates so fixing that was a big and expensive job, but we also used Y2K funding to acquire all kinds of cutting-edge computer equipment which helped catapult the registry forward. This allowed me to digitize all the registry’s recorded documents going back to the 1640s and to make those document images fully accessible on the registry’s website at no charge to our customers. This was a pivotal moment because it meant registry users no longer had to physically come to the registry to research land ownership. If they had a computer and an internet connection, they could do it all from their home or office, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Besides making registry records more accessible, this wholesale digitalization made registry users more comfortable with working online. This paid dividends in 2005 when we rolled out electronic document recording. That technology allowed a lawyer to create a secure internet connection to the registry and then scan original documents like deeds and mortgages back at the law office and securely transmit them electronically to the registry of deeds where they would be recorded the moment they were received. Recording fees were paid by an electronic transfer of funds from the lawyer’s bank to the registry’s account. This was rapidly adopted by lawyers and lenders in the real estate field and before long, more than 80 percent of the documents being recorded arrived at the registry electronically. This was a huge efficiency for the registry since typing and scanning was done by the submitter instead of the registry staff, there were no checks to handle, and no original documents to mail back to customers.

This widespread adoption of remote research and recording helped ease the transition to the registry’s new space in early 2020 when the office moved from its home of 165 years at the Middlesex Superior Courthouse on Gorham Street to the new Lowell Justice Center on Jackson Street. Because the registry of deeds is part of the Secretary of State’s office and not the Trial Court, the initial plans for the Justice Center did not include the registry of deeds. Because we were squeezed in later in the planning process, the amount of space the registry was allocated dropped from 15,000 square feet in the old space to just 5,000 square feet in the new. Because our online research and recording capabilities were already used extensively, it gave us the flexibility to reduce the amount of space available to the public.

I expected this new office configuration to generate pushback from traditionalist customers who were more comfortable doing everything in person than online, but that friction never materialized due to an unexpected circumstance – the Covid-19 pandemic. The physical move of registry operations from Gorham Street to the Justice Center happened on Saturday, March 21, 2020, in the earliest days of the lockdown. For the next 15 months, no one was able to come to the registry in person due to the pandemic. Through that same period, real estate was booming in an almost irrational way, so even the traditionalists learned to do everything remotely. Once the building reopened to the public, anytime someone asked, “why can’t I do my work in the registry space like we used to?” I would reply, “how have you been doing it for the past 15 months when you weren’t able to come here?” which usually ended the conversation. (While there’s nothing inherently wrong with someone coming to the office in person, the reality is that it is much more efficient and productive both for the customer and for registry staff to do things by phone, email, or online.)

One thing I regret being unable to accomplish during my tenure was fully integrating registry of deeds records into an online mapping system. As far back as 2000, I advocated greater use of Geographic Information System (GIS) software – basically, online mapping – to retrieve and display land ownership records. Add to this the tax assessing and zoning functions of municipal government, and soon you would have one stop shopping for land-related information. Early on, this was a novel concept but today with everyone dependent on their vehicle’s GPS system for wayfinding, digital mapping technology is widely embraced. I suspect the “silo” effect of separate agencies offering their records independently masks the benefits that would flow from integrating them in a map-based system. But that will be a task for someone else to accomplish.

Another registry task I hope someone will take on is to make greater use of artificial intelligence. Whether it is transcribing historic records written in cursive into searchable text; providing 24/7 customer service on the registry website; performing quality control of documents submitted for recording; or just doing regular office tasks more efficiently, I believe the ability of AI to help with future registry operations is nearly unlimited. I do think that real estate law (and much else) can’t be boiled down solely to a set of yes/no questions, so human judgement will always be needed. But as the saying goes, “You won’t be replaced by AI but you might be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI” so I think the time is right for everyone to start experimenting with the capabilities of this new technology.

Finally, I want to thank the voters of the Northern Middlesex District (which includes Billerica, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Dracut, Dunstable, Lowell, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Westford, and Wilmington) for electing me to five consecutive six-year terms as register of deeds. It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve you over the past 30 years.

As for what I will do with my time now that I don’t have to go to the registry of deeds office every day, I plan to spend more time researching and writing about Lowell history which is a fascinating and limitless topic. I will keep writing this weekly newsletter on Lowell politics which is, after all, a record of history as it happens. Some related projects are also in the planning stages, so I’ll have more to share in the coming weeks.

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Here are some highlights from this week on richardhowe.com,

I wrote about the little-known but suddenly more relevant American invasion of Canada during the Revolutionary War;

Louise Peloquin has excerpts from the December 31, 1924, edition of L’Etoile, Lowell’s French language newspaper, recounting how the community celebrated New Year’s Eve one hundred years ago; and

Marjorie Arons-Barron has some thoughts on the passing of President Jimmy Carter.

Steve O’Connor has a story that sets a contemporary social issue in the context of ancient Greece.