Ask the expert: attest, notarise, certify – what’s the difference?

I am a British citizen who moved to Dubai recently and I am confused by some of the legal terms and procedures relating to documents I need to submit. My new employer has told me I need to have my degree certificate ‘attested’. The manager at my bank has told me he needs a ‘certified’ copy of my passport. My estate agent says if I want to purchase a property, certain documents need to be ‘notarised’. Could you please explain these terms, and what I need to do in each case?

These terms and procedures can be confusing. Notarisation is the process by which a qualified person known as a notary verifies the authenticity of a document. This is equally applicable in the UAE and the UK. A UAE document will be notarised by a UAE-qualified notary and a British document will be notarised by a UK-qualified notary.

Certification of a copy of an original document will be done by a lawyer. If the document is your British passport, for example, a UK-qualified lawyer, in the UK or in the UAE, can take a copy of the original and certify that the copy is a true copy of the original.

The document is then taken to the UAE Embassy in London, which certifies that the document has been properly authenticated in the UK. It is only after all of this that you can present the document to whatever UAE agency or government department requests it.

Since you are living in Dubai, you can have UAE documents notarised by a local notary and UK copies certified by UK-qualified lawyers in the UAE. But for the document(s) that need attesting/legalising, they will have to be taken to or sent to the UK. But there are firms in the UK that provide a one-stop service, and the process could be completed in a single day.