Find a Notary, Attestation & Document Legalisation Lawyer

Dubai's public notarisation function sits with the Dubai Courts Notary Public, and Abu Dhabi's with the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department's notary services — each emirate runs its own public notary infrastructure rather than a single federal one, though the underlying notarial concepts are broadly similar across both.

Public notary offices handle the widest range of notarial acts — powers of attorney, corporate resolutions, acknowledgments and various declarations — and are generally the default route unless a private notary is being used for a specific service it is licensed to provide.

Dubai has licensed private notary offices operating alongside the Dubai Courts Notary Public, offering many of the same notarial services with different appointment availability and service style. A private notary's notarisation carries the same legal weight as the public notary's for the services it's licensed to handle, but not every notarial act is available through every private notary — check scope before relying on one for something unusual.

This is a useful option when speed or appointment flexibility matters more than which specific office handles the notarisation, and a lawyer can point you to the right one for your specific document rather than the first one you find online.

A general power of attorney gives broad authority to act on someone's behalf across many matters, while a special or specific power of attorney is limited to a defined task or transaction — such as one specific property sale, or representing someone in one specific dispute. UAE practice also recognises property powers of attorney (for buying, selling or managing real estate), litigation powers of attorney (for representing someone in court), and company-management powers of attorney (for running a business on an owner's behalf).

Getting the scope of a power of attorney right matters enormously — too broad, and you've handed over more authority than intended; too narrow, and the agent can't actually complete the transaction it was meant for. A lawyer drafting or reviewing a power of attorney should match its scope precisely to what you actually need done.

If you will sign a power of attorney outside the UAE for use here, a lawyer can review the draft before you sign it in front of a local notary — which UAE embassies such as those in London and Doha ask for before that country's foreign ministry attests it — so the wording is settled before the document goes through the legalisation chain.

A power of attorney can be revoked by the person who granted it, generally through a formal notarised revocation. It's not enough to simply decide it's revoked in your own mind — anyone relying on the original power of attorney in good faith may still be protected unless the revocation has actually been notified to them or registered where relevant.

If the power of attorney was used with specific counterparties — a bank, a land department, a company registry — those bodies typically need to be notified of the revocation directly, not just the notary. A lawyer should draw up a notification plan alongside the revocation itself.

Company formation, share transfers, and various corporate changes on the UAE mainland typically require the Memorandum of Association or its amendments to be authenticated — since October 2025 by the competent licensing authority, with a notary only by exception where that authority decides — along with board or shareholder resolutions authorising the change. Whoever authenticates the documents, the underlying legal-risk question — whether the resolution and MOA are actually drafted correctly for what the company intends — sits with a lawyer, not the notary.

A notary confirms identity and formal execution; it does not review whether the resolution achieves what the shareholders actually meant, or whether it's consistent with the company's other constitutional documents. That review is legal work, and getting it wrong at the notarisation stage can create real corporate-governance problems later.

An affidavit is a written statement sworn before a notary, used in the UAE for a range of purposes — from confirming a factual matter for a government application to supporting a court filing. The notary witnesses and certifies the sworn statement; the content and legal effect of what's sworn is the affiant's and, where relevant, their lawyer's responsibility.

Because an affidavit is a sworn legal statement, getting its wording precise matters — a lawyer should draft or review one before it's sworn, not just accept a template.

A company-management power of attorney lets an appointed manager run day-to-day operations, sign contracts, and represent the company, often used where an owner is based abroad or wants to delegate operational authority formally. This is a substantive governance document, not a simple form, and its scope should be tied directly to what the company's own constitutional documents actually allow.

Litigation powers of attorney, used to authorise a lawyer or representative to act in court proceedings, and property powers of attorney, used for real-estate transactions, each have their own conventions around scope and the specific registries they need to be recorded with — a lawyer should confirm which registration steps apply to the specific type you need.

Companies and individuals operating through DIFC or ADGM sometimes still need mainland notarial services — for example where a DIFC or ADGM entity's documents need to be used with a mainland government authority, a bank, or in a cross-border transaction. Free-zone status does not exempt a document from needing UAE notarisation or the legalisation chain where the document's actual use requires it.

A lawyer familiar with both the DIFC or ADGM context and mainland notarial practice can identify when a document genuinely needs mainland notarisation versus when it doesn't, rather than defaulting to the full chain unnecessarily.

For a straightforward, well-understood document — a simple certificate attestation, for instance — dealing directly with a notary or a reputable document-services company may be all you need. Where the document carries real legal weight — a power of attorney with broad authority, a corporate resolution, an affidavit supporting litigation, or anywhere the terminology itself has been unclear, as with Apostille versus legalisation — a lawyer should review the document's substance and confirm the correct process before you start, not after a rejection.

LEXNOVA can help you find a lawyer for the substantive drafting and legal-risk review, alongside the notarial practitioner who handles the formal execution and legalisation steps themselves.