Legalization
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Document legalization involves a series of formal procedures required to assign legal standing to a document on the territory of another state. Document legalization is required in almost all cases when the document needs to be submitted to official government agencies of another state. This means that a document issued, for example, in Russia only has legal standing on the territory of the Russian Federation, where it may be freely used. But it must be legalized before being submitted to official government agencies of another state.
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Excluded from this rule are some types of documents that do not require legalization, as well as some countries with which Russia has reached bilateral agreements rescinding legalization obligations.
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There are two main types of document legalizations – the application of an Apostille stamp, and consular legalization. The selection of which type of legalization is required for each particular case depends on the country of the document’s destination, i.e. the country to whose state agencies it will be submitted.
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| The Apostille stamp is applied to documents sent to countries that have acceded to the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961, which revokes the consular legalization requirement and introduces a simplified procedure – the Apostille stamp. |
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| Consular legalization |
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| Consular legalization is applied to documents used on the territories of states that have not acceded to the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961. |
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| This type of legalization is carried out in three steps: |
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 Document certification at the Justice Ministry of the Russian Federation;
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| Document certification at the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation; |
| Document certification at the consulate of the country of document destination. |
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| Only after completion of all three of the above-mentioned steps is a document fully ready for submission to official state agencies of the country of destination. |
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| In most cases, consular legalization is also performed on copies of notarized documents (these may be copies of personal documents, birth or death certificates, marriage or divorce certificates, diplomas, attestations, etc., along with copies of constituent documents of legal entities: statutes, legal agreements, certificates of registration with tax and other authorities, as well as numerous other documents) or on original documents that were drawn up with the help of a notary (for example, letters of attorney, consent for a child’s leave abroad, etc.). |
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| Consular legalization services may be provided either in full (including the consulate of the country of destination) or in part – only in the Russian Justice and Foreign Ministries. In the latter case, the client personally registers the document with the consulate of the country of destination. |
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| Legalization of documents with the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry |
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| Generally, the procedure of legalizing a document with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry is followed in two cases: when this is required by the organization to which the document will eventually be submitted, or when neither consular legalization nor the Apostille stamp apply to the document involved. In the latter case, it is preferable to first agree this type of document legalization with the organization that will eventually receive the document involved. |
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| As a rule, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry legalizes documents of a commercial nature: agreements, invoices, consignments and bills of landing, certificates of origin, various documents to legal title of goods, and other document related to foreign economic activity. |
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