A legalization is the acknowledgement of the official signature of a public servant, whose signature must be recorded in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs database. The signature of the public servant on the document is legalized but the contents of the document are not certified or checked. A document must be legalized when the country where it will take effect is not part of the Convention on the Elimination of Legalization Requirement for Foreign Public Documents, The Hague 1961.

The Legalization may also placed on a private document.  The signature in the private document must be acknowledged by a Notary Public, and the Notary´s signature must be registered in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs database.