Notary

The role of a notary public and a solicitor are very different. Many notaries are also practising solicitors.  A notary public is a regulated legal professional authorised to practise by the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury to notarise documents for use mostly overseas.  They must remain impartial and maintain international standards and act in accordance with the Notary Practice Rules and the Code of Practice.

An apostille is a government certification issued to your documents for international recognition that verifies the notarial act was carried out by an authorised and regulated notary. We send your documents to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for apostille but if you require them with a quicker turnaround then we work with a partner agency to obtain the apostille.  The agency can then arrange to send them by courier to their final destination, back to you or to our offices for you to collect.

Embassy legalisation is an equivalent certificate required by countries that have not adopted the “Hague Apostille Convention” so do not accept just the apostille. Our partner agency deals with all of the embassies in London who have a consular legalisation desk.  If you are unsure about whether your document requires legalisation please ask the organisation who requires the document.  We can provide general advice on this but it is better to ask the organisation what they need.

The answer to this is sometimes.  The organisation asking you to provide a notarised document should be able to advise you on this.  However, if your documents need embassy legalisation, some country’s embassies do not allow bundling of documents.

We need two forms of identification to comply with the relevant fraud and money laundering prevention procedures. Usually, we ask for a current passport and proof of address, such as a bank statement or utility bill.  Please ask us if you will have difficulty in supplying these documents and we can discuss what we can accept.

The answer to this is maybe.  Documents issued in England and Wales by a public officer such as a registrar which has a wet signature or and original crown issued certificate, may not need the intervention of a notary.  Documents such as original or registrar’s issued birth, death or marriage certificate or a Police Certificate issued by ACRO Criminal Records Office should not also need notarising.  However, DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) Certificates would need notarising in order to obtain apostille.