Apostille Services in Los Angeles, CA
More apostille work originates in Los Angeles than in any other American metro, and more of it starts in the wrong building. Part of that is scale and part of it is a genuine local oddity: this is one of the very few cities in the country where a state apostille counter is a real place you can walk into, so the instinct to go somewhere and hand a document to a person is, for once, not wrong. It is only half right. That counter belongs to California and its authority stops at California's own officials, which means the single most common document behind an apostille request here — the FBI Identity History Summary that residence permits, work visas and overseas licensing boards ask for — cannot be filed there at all. Federal documents are authenticated in Washington, DC, by one office, and the drive downtown does not shorten that journey by a mile.
The state apostille counter in downtown Los Angeles
It sits at 300 South Spring Street, inside the Ronald Reagan State Building, and it is one of only two places in California where the Secretary of State takes apostille filings across a counter — the other is Sacramento. There is no appointment system. You arrive, take a number, and wait to be called, and the certificate is issued while you are there. Filing this way costs $20 per apostille plus a $6 special-handling fee for each public official's signature being authenticated, so a single document is $26 at the counter against $20 by post. Bring a completed cover sheet naming the country the document is going to, and bring a card, a check or a money order rather than cash, which the Los Angeles office does not take. One caution worth repeating: the office has been working out of a different suite in the same building during an elevator outage, so confirm where it is on sos.ca.gov on the morning you go rather than trusting any room number you read anywhere, including here.
What it cannot do for you:
- It has no authority over a federal document. An FBI Identity History Summary, a naturalisation certificate, a document issued by a federal court — none of those belong to California, and no California office can authenticate them. They are apostilled by the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC, and nowhere else.
- It authenticates California officials only. The signature on your document has to belong to a California notary, a California county clerk or a California registrar. A Nevada notarisation or an Arizona birth certificate is turned away at this counter no matter how long you have lived in Los Angeles.
- Same-day means same visit, not same-day service in the sense a courier would use it. If the queue outlasts the counter's day, you come back; nothing is held over and processed for you.
- No mail is handled there. Posted requests go to Sacramento, and an envelope addressed to the Los Angeles office is not what starts a filing.
- Nobody there will notarise anything. A diploma, a power of attorney, a company resolution — every private document has to arrive already notarised, because the notary's signature is the only thing the state is able to certify.
Getting fingerprinted for an FBI background check in Los Angeles
The specifically Los Angeles problem is Live Scan. There is a Live Scan shop on what feels like every second commercial block here, and people reasonably assume that is how you get an FBI background check — but California Live Scan runs a state and federal check on behalf of a requesting agency, and the result is returned to that agency rather than to you. A document you never receive is a document that cannot be apostilled. For a copy in your own hands, which is what a foreign consulate, employer or university is asking for, there are two routes and Live Scan is neither: a rolled FD-258 card posted to the FBI, or an electronic enrolment through an FBI-approved Channeler. Both produce an Identity History Summary addressed to you, which is the thing that can then be authenticated.
Fingerprinting is the only step that has to happen in Los Angeles at all — the in-person option above is a choice, not a requirement. What follows it — the report, the authentication, the certificate — is paperwork moving between offices, and none of those offices are in the Los Angeles basin. That whole lane is written up on the FBI background check apostille page.
Los Angeles documents that need a federal apostille
For Los Angeles the federal court is the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California — Los Angeles, at the First Street U.S. Courthouse downtown, and anything it signs goes to Washington rather than to Sacramento. The test is always who signed the document — never where the person holding it lives.
| Document | Lane | Authenticated by |
|---|---|---|
| FBI Identity History Summary · naturalization and citizenship certificates · records from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California — Los Angeles, at the First Street U.S. Courthouse downtown · IRS, FDA and USDA letters | Federal | U.S. Dept. of State, Washington, DC |
| Birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates issued in California | State | California Secretary of State |
| Diplomas, transcripts, powers of attorney and anything notarized in California | State | California Secretary of State |
Filing a U.S. District Court for the Central District of California — Los Angeles, at the First Street U.S. Courthouse downtown record into Sacramento — or a California record into Washington — is the most common rejection there is, and it costs the whole turnaround a second time. The California half is covered on the California apostille services page.
Where Los Angeles documents are headed
From the Los Angeles basin the destinations that come up most often are Mexico, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, India, China, Israel, Guatemala and Brazil — every one of them a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, which is why a single certificate is enough. Between member states the Convention replaced consular legalisation outright: once the apostille is attached, nothing further is asked of you in Los Angeles or at the other end.
The Los Angeles metro hosts consulates for Mexico, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, India, China, Israel, Guatemala, El Salvador and Brazil among others, and they are a common source of wasted trips: a consulate in Los Angeles cannot authenticate an American signature or issue an apostille for a US document. It receives documents that already carry one. An instruction from one of them to "get an apostille" points at Sacramento or Washington — or, for a state document only, the counter described above.
Getting documents from Los Angeles to the U.S. Department of State
Nothing about Los Angeles slows a document down once it is airborne — this is the largest air-freight gateway on the West Coast and it almost never loses a day to weather, which sets it apart from the other transcontinental metros on this site. The constraint here is on the ground and it is entirely about clock time. A pickup made after the afternoon cutoff in a basin this size is tomorrow's shipment, and the three-hour offset to Eastern time means a package that leaves late in the Los Angeles day lands at a federal office that has already closed and will open to it the following morning. Ground service is a full coast-to-coast leg in each direction against Washington, DC, where federal apostilles are filed. None of that is a reason to worry about a four-week timeline; it is a reason to hand a document over in the morning rather than at five.
Nothing in that asks you to travel. Documents leave Los Angeles, we file them over the counter in DC, and the secure scan reaches you in the Los Angeles basin the day the apostille is issued — well before the originals are back.
Serving the Los Angeles basin
Every apostille is filed in Sacramento or in Washington, so the part of the Los Angeles basin you happen to be in changes the courier leg and nothing else. Not the fee, not the process, not the date it lands back in Los Angeles. We work with residents and employers across Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, including:
| Downtown | Koreatown | Hollywood | Silver Lake |
| Echo Park | Boyle Heights | East Los Angeles | West Los Angeles |
| Santa Monica | Culver City | Inglewood | Torrance |
| Long Beach | Pasadena | Glendale | Burbank |
| Sherman Oaks | Van Nuys | Woodland Hills | Whittier |
- California authenticates its own documents through the Secretary of State, and that one sentence is the whole of the state-level story — the California apostille page covers the fees, the queue and the document rules in full.
- Los Angeles and Sacramento are the only two public apostille counters in the state, which makes the downtown office the sole in-person option for roughly half of California's population.
- Filing over the counter costs $6 more per signature than filing by post. It is a special-handling fee attached to the in-person channel, not a rush fee, and it buys you the trip rather than a faster queue.
- A Live Scan result goes to the agency that requested it, not to the applicant — which is why so many Los Angeles apostille requests stall on a background check the applicant has paid for but never received a copy of.
- Los Angeles hosts the largest consular corps in the United States, and not one of those consulates can issue a US apostille or authenticate an American signature.
- Records of the Central District of California are federal records. They are produced in Los Angeles and authenticated three thousand miles away, like every other federal document.
- A California birth or marriage certificate can come from the county recorder or from the state registrar, and what gets authenticated is the official's signature on the certified copy — an informational copy or a photocopy is never authenticable.
Los Angeles apostille questions & answers
Can I actually walk in and get an apostille in Los Angeles?+
For a California document, yes — the Secretary of State's counter on South Spring Street issues them the same visit, no appointment, at $20 plus a $6 special-handling fee per signature. For a federal document, no, and that is not a queue problem or a paperwork problem: California has no authority over federal records at all. Those go to the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC.
I have my FBI background check. Can I take it to the Spring Street counter?+
No. An FBI Identity History Summary is a federal document, and the only office in the country that apostilles federal documents is the U.S. Department of State. Turning up with one in Los Angeles will cost you the morning and nothing else. This is the single most common wasted trip in this metro, and it is worth being blunt about because the counter's existence is exactly what makes people assume otherwise.
Why is it $26 in person when the website says $20?+
Both numbers are right. The apostille itself is $20 whether you post it or carry it. The extra $6 is a special-handling fee that applies to in-person filings, charged per public official's signature being authenticated — so one document with one signature is $26, and a filing that needs two different officials' signatures authenticated costs more than that. Nothing about paying it makes the certificate faster once you are at the counter.
I got Live Scan done. Isn't that my FBI background check?+
Almost certainly not the version you need. Live Scan submits your prints for a check run on behalf of whichever agency required it, and the results go back to that agency — you generally never hold the document. An apostille has to attach to a document in your possession. What you want is an Identity History Summary issued to you, either by posting a rolled FD-258 card to the FBI or by enrolling through an FBI-approved Channeler.
The Mexican consulate told me to get an apostille. Do they issue it?+
No, and the instruction is still correct — they are telling you to go and get one before you come back. A consulate receives documents that already carry an apostille; it cannot authenticate an American official's signature. For a California-issued or California-notarised document that means the Secretary of State, and for anything federal it means Washington, DC. Mexico is a party to the Convention, so the apostille completes the process with no legalisation step afterwards.
My document was issued in another state but I live in Los Angeles. Can the counter handle it?+
No. Authentication follows the document, never the person: the state that issued it or commissioned the notary on it is the state that authenticates it. A Texas birth certificate is a Texas matter even if it has sat in a drawer in Pasadena for thirty years. The practical answer is usually to have it handled where it came from rather than to move house-to-house with it.
Do I need a certified translation as well?+
Sometimes, and it is a separate question from the apostille. The apostille certifies a signature; it says nothing about language, and it is never a translation. Whether the receiving institution wants the document translated, and whether it wants a translator of a particular kind, is set by that institution rather than by any US office. Worth settling before you pay for authentication, because a translation added afterwards may itself need notarising.
What it costs from Los Angeles
| Notarized true-copy apostille | Flat $179/document · government fees included · keep your originals |
| Vital records & state-issued documents | From $300 · original certified copy ships to our intake center · custom quote |
| FBI background check (federal) | Fingerprints taken in Los Angeles · apostilled in Washington · same-day scan |
Apostille guides for other metro areas
- Apostille services in San Diego, CA
- Apostille services in Seattle, WA
- Apostille services in Houston, TX
- All metro areas
Federal Apostille™ is a private, independent courier and document-processing service operating nationally. We do not maintain an office, counter or staff in Los Angeles, and we are not affiliated with the California Secretary of State, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California — Los Angeles, at the First Street U.S. Courthouse downtown, or any government agency or consulate named on this page.