Companies and internationally active lawyers are familiar with the situation: a managing director or the client is resident abroad and documents signed by him/her must be submitted in certified form to the commercial register or land registry (Section 12 HGB or Section 29 Paragraph 1 GBO). As a rule, the client is then asked to visit a local notary to sign the necessary documents and have his signature certified. Subsequently, in most cases legalisation is required or the foreign deed must be provided with an apostille in order to be recognised by German courts (cf. Section 15 Kon-sularG or Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 on the Exemption of Foreign Public Documents from Legalisation; a practical country overview can be found at dnoti.de/).