It's a Small World After All

Apostilles and Legalizations

In the current business climate, international transactions are becoming increasingly prevalent. The world is getting smaller and you may find in this global marketplace that various documents will need to be legalized or apostilled before being sent to another country.

The simplest way to look at legalizations is as a process of signature authentications, beginning either with a document signed by a notary or produced by a governmental agency and ending with the embassy or consulate of the country in which the document will be used. Each step authenticates the signature before it and the recipient in the target country should consider the document to be valid after it has been through this series of authentications.

In 1961, a group of countries came together under Convention 12 of The Hague. These jurisdictions agreed to recognize one another’s documents without the full legalizations process.
If the country that the documents are coming from and the country to which they are going are both member jurisdictions, the document is apostilled instead of legalized.

Capitol Services can handle each step of both the apostille and legalizations processes. Members of this team are well-versed in the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the embassies and consulates throughout the country and are happy to help with any questions you may have.