BUSE offers the certification of bilingual contracts in German and English with corresponding bilingual preparation and processing. The same service is also available in German/French, German/Spanish, German/Italian and German/Polish by individual arrangement.
Virtually all real estate legal transactions and many corporate transactions must be notarised in Germany before a civil law notary. In some federal states there are notaries who perform this function exclusively, in others they must also be lawyers. Historically, the border has essentially been drawn according to the territory of the Code Napoléon at that time, with the exception of the new federal states in which the system of the exclusive notary was introduced.
The working methods of notaries-only and lawyer-notaries differ in some respects.
The notary is largely responsible for drafting the deed if it is not specified by the parties involved themselves, and implementation: effecting the required entry in the land register or commercial register. An essential difference to the activity of a lawyer is the impartiality of the notary demanded by law. This places the function of the notary close to that of an official at first sight, e.g. at the land registry office. Often the participants also experience that a notary asks them what they want in order to develop the text of the notarisation from it, and brings the expressed wishes -exclusively- into text version and executes them.
According to German law, the notary cannot be blamed for this either, at least not if he does not neglect to point out considerable risks to the contracting parties. The notary-only is not required to deliver service for foreign contractual parties who are not proficient in the German language; if necessary, an interpreter must be called in for certification.
It may be logical that the advantage of the notary-only in the statistical average is that he has more professional experience due to his exclusively notarial activity. However, some lawyer-notaries compensate for this by also working almost exclusively as notaries despite their permission to practise as lawyers. Furthermore, they contribute their legal knowledge and the practical relevance of their often business law experience to their work.
The advantage of lawyer-notaries from the client’s point of view is their ability to recognise interests and to operate creatively, perhaps to have additional qualifications, such as a tax adviser or specialist lawyer for tax law, and thus to be able to help those involved particularly in the search for solutions that are specifically in line with their interests. Precisely because the lawyer-notary knows the work as an interest-bound representative of clients, he will be particularly in a position and usually also willing to do so. He will also be prepared to react to language barriers and to lower them through direct communication with the client, without withdrawing to the fact that German is the official and court language.
Tip:
Foreign clients and legal representatives of clients with interests in Germany can demand and expect the inclusion of their strategic considerations and economic interests in the advice of the parties to the contract without having to fear language barriers when notarising in our notary’s office. Notarizations can only be made at our locations in Berlin and Essen, but for legal transactions with real estate and companies throughout Germany, as we are electronically connected to all land registries and commercial registers in Germany. To the extent permitted by law, the parties involved may be represented.
