Legalisation / apostille Services Foreign Commonwealth Office & embassies
The legalisation process is often very confusing. Whilst some countries' authorities require documents to be simply authenticated, others will request for them to be both legalised and attested. The fact that the legalisation jargon varies from country to country complicates the process even more.
As a general rule original documents, such as Degree Certificates, will have to be notarised by a regulated professional (i.e. Notary Public or Solicitor) before they can be legalised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
To verify the authenticity of the signature the FCO relies on a database of regulated professionals such as solicitors, notaries, religious ministers, doctors etc..The database contains the scanned signatures/seals of these practitioners. It is therefore highly recommeded that before you proceed, you ensure that your chosen professional is on the FCO official list.
Once the FCO have verified the stamp/signature against their database and are satisfied that the signature is authentic, they will proceed and endorse the document with an apostille (legalisation certificate ).
As opposed to Degree Certificate, the FCO will only legalise original Birth, Marriage/Civil Partnership, Death certificates. This also applies to certificates of no impediment. Notorised/certified copies will not be accepted. In this instance a new original certificate can be raised for future use - click here for more information.
Document legalisation/attestation requirements can vary from Embassy to Embassy. Some Embassies will insist on only original documents, while others will accept certified copies.
For instance, most visa nationals in the UK wishing to travel to France have to obtain a French Schengen visa from a UK based French Embassy/Consulate. In support of their applications, married applicants are required to submit their original/translated marriage certificate. Where Indian passport holders are concerned, the certificate will only be accepted by the French consulate if the documentt has been authenticated/legalised by the Indian Embassy in London first. Minor applicants will be required to produce their authenticated/legalised birth certificates. This requirement also applies to certificates issued in China and in an increasing number of other countries. As a general rule, any certificate issued overseas will have to be legalised by their respective Embassy/Consulate in the UK .
Some embassies will accept documents notarised by a solicitor, while others will insist on it being performed by an actual Notary Public. It is important that you verify the levels of legalisation/authentication that is being asked of the document's country of destination.
To recap, depending on the document and the country of destination, the Legalisation process involves between 1 to 3 stages:
WQ can provision the full Legalisation process except in the following circumstances
Countries currently allowing legalisation via third party:
Brazil . China . France . Ghana . India . Nigerian. Russia . Saudi Arabia . Taiwan . United Arab Emirates ( UAE ).
If your country is not listed above please contact us for further information.
Tips:
Confirm the legalisation requirements before proceeding.
Check with the UKBA before submitting a new passport to be endorsed with a UK residence permit as some newly issued passports which have not been traveled on will require authentication at their respective Embassy first.
FCO document legalisation processing fee currently £69 per document.
Estimated Solicitor fees £10 per document; Notary Public fees from £75 + VAT
Embassy document legalisation/attestation processing fees depend on the type of documents and vary from embassy to embassy, contact us for more information
> Contact / Instruct WQ Associates To Legalise Documents
