Legalize federal documents requiring use in foreign countries often must be authenticated (or legalized) before being used in another country. This process is required by a treaty known as the Hague Convention of 1961.

For documents that are issued by the federal government, there is one standard way to authenticate or apostille those documents to make them usable in any foreign jurisdiction. To get this done, a document needs to be signed by the issuing department’s official and then sent to the U.S. Department of State Authentication Office in Washington DC for authentication.

This is known as an apostille or Certificate of Authentication and guarantees that the signatory’s signature on the document is genuine. This also ensures that the seal on the document is valid. The apostille is placed on the document, or sometimes on a separate page called an allonge.

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The difference between an apostille and a notarization is that the latter is at the local level and verifies that the signatures on a document are indeed genuine. An apostille, on the other hand, is internationally recognized and guaranteed to be valid globally by the authority that issued it, which is either at the state or national level.

For documents that require an apostille, we can handle the entire process from start to finish for you. Our apostille service includes translations in over 250 languages and has some of the lowest rates on the market. Walk-in apostille services are available in New York City, Albany and Utica.