Once foreign counsel has been retained, you will have to provide counsel with information and documentation necessary for enforcing the judgment. A copy of the judgment itself is universally required, and some courts may additionally require the principal pleadings of the case. This raises the issue of what requirements have to be met for authentication of those documents to be submitted to the foreign court, which will be a matter of local law in the enforcing jurisdiction. In addition to those documents that will be submitted to the foreign court, foreign counsel must have a clear understanding of the underlying adjudication in the United States. Defendant might raise issues regarding the law upon which the U.S. cause of action was based or question the U.S. court's jurisdiction to render the judgment. Therefore, all pleadings from the underlying adjudication not otherwise required for submission to the foreign court might still be required by foreign counsel in order to prepare pleadings for conversion of the judgment and to argue for enforcement, together with information on the court rules, practices, and law applied in the underlying U.S. adjudication.

Countries that require the legalization of documentation, otherwise known as “authentication,” can be divided into two groups: those that are parties to the Hague Convention on Legalization for Foreign Public Documents (which will accept the simplified apostille process of authentication of documents) and those that require more traditional and lengthy procedures.