Ethical Duties and Practical Issues in Notarization for International Transactions

Francesca Giannoni-Crystal, Founder | Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal, LLC

Francesca Giannoni-Crystal is a dually-qualified U.S. and Italian attorney and the co-founder of Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal, LLC, a “lawyers for lawyers and international matters” boutique. She acts as a lawyer for lawyers, helping firms bridge civil law and common law systems, handle cross-border ethics questions, support international litigation, and close international transactions. She is co-author of Do the Right Thing (for your duty of competency): Some Ethical and Practical Thoughts on “Notarization” in International Transactions, published in Global Jurist in 2012.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Giannoni-Crystal holds two Juris Doctor degrees: one from the University of Florence, Italy, where she graduated with maximum grades (110/110), and one from the Charleston School of Law, where she graduated cum laude. She also earned an LLM in Air and Space Law, summa cum laude, from the University of Mississippi School of Law. She is admitted as an attorney in New York and the District of Columbia, as an avvocato in Italy, and as a foreign legal consultant in South Carolina (not a member of the SC Bar), and she is admitted to the United States District and Bankruptcy Courts for the District of Columbia. She works in Italian and English at native proficiency, Spanish at full working proficiency (DELE C1 certified), and German at professional working proficiency, with additional French, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, and Hebrew.

• Recognition & Leadership

She serves as vice chair and policy officer of the International Ethics Committee of the ABA Section of International Law and sits on the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC), where she served on the subcommittee that drafted the report on a proposed rule for temporary practice of law and in-house counsel in New York, approved by the NYSBA House of Delegates in November 2015. She is the former Vice Chair of the International Law Committee of the South Carolina Bar and served on its subcommittee recommending limited admission to practice for foreign lawyers, a proposal the SC Bar House of Delegates approved and submitted to the SC Supreme Court. For the 2012–2013 bar year she was Vice-Chair and publications officer of the Europe Committee of the ABA Section of International Law, and she has served on the Committee on Foreign & Comparative Law of the New York City Bar Association. She is rated by Super Lawyers and is co-responsible for Technethics (www.technethics.com), a database, blogging, and training platform on ethics, technology, and privacy.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Giannoni-Crystal is a member of the American Bar Association, including its International Section and the Professional Responsibility Committee of its Business Law Section; the Ordine degli Avvocati di Firenze; the New York State Bar Association and its International Section; the New York City Bar
Association; the District of Columbia Bar; The Bar Association of the District of Columbia; the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia; and the Charleston County Bar Association.

• Experience

Her practice centers on transactional work and contractual issues, including commercial law, banking law, Internet law, business law, international transactions, mergers and acquisitions, company formation and reorganization, financing, and property development. On general retainer with the legal office of a major Italian listed company in Internet and mobile value-added services, she carried direct responsibility for the legal issues of the group’s foreign companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, China, Brazil, and Argentina, establishing branches and offices worldwide and drafting and negotiating international commercial agreements. Working with local lawyers, she has assisted Italian companies with business formations and operations in Spain, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Australia, the United States, Brazil, and Argentina. Earlier she was a legal consultant to the Italian Industrial Association and an attorney with Deloitte Legal before opening her own practice; in 2011 she co-founded Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal, LLC with Nathan M. Crystal.

Her writing on cross-border practice and ethics includes Choice of Law in Lawyers’ Engagement Agreements (121 Penn St. L. Rev. 683, 2017), Choice of Law and Risk Management for Conflicts of Interest (Charleston Law Review, 2022), Using Occam’s Razor to Solve International Attorney-Client Privilege Choice of Law Issues (41 N.C. J. Int’l L. 276, 2016), “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand” … Which Ethical Rule to Apply? Conflict of Ethical Rules in International Arbitration (32 Miss. C.L. Rev. 283, 2013), Enforceability of Forum Selection Clause: A “Gallant Knight” Still Seeking Eldorado (8 S.C. J. Int’l L. & Bus. 203), and Understanding Akzo Nobel (Global Jurist, 2011). She has also written on cloud computing for lawyers across U.S. and EU approaches, on the Internet of Things and data protection in the EU and the U.S., and, more recently, on data processing in space and the GDPR and a series of space law articles in the Journal of Air Law and Commerce, the Journal of Space Law, the Harvard National Security Journal, and the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law.

SESSION 1 – Ethical Duties and Practical Issues in Notarization for International Transactions | Francesca Giannoni-Crystal | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This program examines attorneys’ ethical responsibilities in handling notarization and document authentication in international transactions, particularly the duties of competence (ABA Model Rule 1.1), diligence (Rule 1.3), communication (Rule 1.4), confidentiality (Rule 1.6), and responsibilities regarding nonlawyer assistance (Rule 5.3). It explores the fundamental differences between notaries in common law and civil law jurisdictions and the practical difficulties these differences create when documents executed in one country must be used in another. The program will address the authentication and recognition of foreign documents, including apostilles and legalization, as well as common problems involving powers of attorney, public instruments, translations, and other formal requirements. Through practical examples, the program will discuss how attorneys can anticipate and resolve these issues, coordinate effectively with foreign counsel, notaries, and other service providers, safeguard client information, communicate with clients about potential obstacles, and avoid unnecessary costs, delays, and risks.