Legalization

In international law legalization is defined as the process of verification and identification of the document with the purpose of the document to be legally valid and accepted in the other state. This process is frequently used in the international trade and civil legislation. The process of legislation requires that the signature on the document is attested by an official who holds a higher position than the person who signed it. For example, a school certificate must be legalized by the Ministry of Education, the legalization of the official’s signature from the Ministry of Education needs to be performed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

There are different ways of legalizing documents. The first option is consular legalization: it is used when legalizing documents for countries that are not part of the 1961 Hague Convention. The second option is called the apostille certification. This is a more simple type of document legislation that became possible as a result of the 1961 Hague Convention that abolished the Requirement for Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in all countries that signed the convention.

Consular legislation is needed for documents due to be sent or used in the United Arab Emirates or in most of the Chinese provinces (with the exception of a former British colony Hong Kong and a former Portuguese colony Macau that have their own legal systems.) It must be noted that consular legalization is not always required, and that some types of documents cannot be legalized. Furthermore, consular legalization is not required when there is a two-way treaty abolishing legalization between Russia and the recipient country.

As it has been explained before, consular legalization consists of verification and identification of the signature and the stamp by the official holding a higher position than the one who signed the document. Each document that needs to be legalized must undergo the following process:

1. Attestation of the document by the Notary Public (together with the translation and identification of the translator’s signature if required).
2. Attestation of the signature of the Notary Public by an official from the Ministry of Justice.
3. Attestation of the Ministry of Justice official’s signature and stamp in the consulate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
4. Attestation of the document in the consulate of the recipient state.

There exists another way of legalizing documents – legalization in the Chamber of Commerce of the Russian Federation. This type of legalization is needed when the requirement comes from the establishment that will be receiving the legalized document or when the document does not require to be legalized or verified with an apostille. As a general rule, business documents referring to foreign trade activities, for example, product certificates, agreements, invoices, consignment notes and other documents will require to be legalized in the Chamber of Commerce.

Legalization in the Chamber of Commerce is a two-step process:

• Attestation by an official’s stamp in the Chamber of Commerce of the Russian Federation.
• Attestation in the consulate of the recipient country.

There are no uniform rules prescribing for the document to be translated. The choice – to have the document translated or not- depends on the requirements of the official establishment that will be receiving the document. This is why it is recommended to contact the establishment in advance in order to ensure that you are aware of all the particular requirements. In our experience, most of the world countries will accept your document only if it is written in its official language. This is why you will need to have your document translated sooner or later; in some cases translation will be required beforehand while in others it will be possible to postpone it until after the document is legalized and have the translation completed in the recipient country rather than in Russia.

Apostille services (apostille stamp).

Hague Convention of 1961 that abolished the Requirement for Legalization for Foreign Public Documents, replaced the process of legalization with the apostille certification. This French word means ‘‘authentication of the originality’’. Apostille services are used when the country that issued the document and the recipient country are party to the Hague Convention of 1961.

Apostille is a stamp that contains standard information, attesting the authenticity of the document. The apostille certification can be obtained from the legal authorities chosen by the countries-members of the Hague Convention. The list of these legal authorities is controlled by the Hague Convention on Private International Law and can include embassies, ministries, courts or local governments.

Documents requiring apostille.

Not all documents will require an apostille. Four types of documents are mentioned in the convention: court documents; administrative documents (for example, civil status documents); notarial acts; official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and notarial authentications of signatures.

According to the requirements of the Hague convention, the following Russian documents will require an apostille certification:

• Documents issued by the Russian Education establishments ( school certificates, higher education diplomas including Masters and PhD, diploma inserts, courses and training certificates, etc.);
• Originals of the documents issued by the registry office (birth and death certificates, marriage and divorce certificates, adoption certificates, change of name certificates);
• Notarized documents (permission to leave/enter the country, certified copies of documents, all types of agreements);
• Commercial and business documents (certified statutes, certificates of incorporation of a company, tax registration certificates, etc.)