Practice area
Notarization and corporate services
The notarization, authentication and document legalisation that underpin cross-border business and filings in Somalia.
How the firm works in this area
Cross-border business generates documents that have to be recognised: powers of attorney, corporate resolutions, contracts and certificates that must be notarized, authenticated and legalised before they will hold in Somalia or abroad. The firm handles that supporting layer of work, which is unglamorous and, when it goes wrong, expensive.
Corporate services also covers the routine maintenance of a Somali presence, from registry filings to license renewals, so that a client’s local entity stays in good standing while its lawyers focus on the substantive matter.
Confidentiality is structural, not cosmetic. Representative work in this area is described by anonymized descriptor only. The firm never implies a named client without consent.
What the firm handles
A working list of the matters clients instruct the firm on in this area.
Selected matters
A development finance institution
Instructed through international counsel, the firm examined the legislative framework governing the concession of a major Somali port. The review assessed the concession against national procurement legislation and the constitutional requirements that govern the disposition of state assets, and set out where the arrangement conformed and where it was exposed. The analysis was delivered in a form the instructing counsel and the institution could rely on for their own decision-making.
An international port operator
The firm provided constitutional and regulatory analysis for a concession to construct and operate a port and an associated toll corridor. The central questions were land rights along the corridor and the allocation of oversight between the Federal Government and the Federal Member State in which the project sits. The firm mapped where authority genuinely lay for each element of the project, so that the operator understood which approvals were secure and which carried federal-state risk.
An international airline
The firm prepared the complete documentation required for the carrier to reach full operational status in Somalia, including the governmental licensing arrangements, and advised on aviation law, corporate structure and the double-taxation questions that cross-border carriers face. On the contentious side it handled high-value civil aviation liability claims, including the analysis of Somali jurisdiction rules on wrongful death and the assessment of damages. The engagement ran across the operational, tax and disputes sides of the airline in parallel.
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Instruct the firm on a matter in Somalia
The firm acts directly for clients and as Somali counsel to more than 140 international and regional firms. Tell us about the matter and the right lawyer will respond.