Ian Hardy - June 28, 2011

Depending on the nature of your case, one important factor in deciding how best to organize your deposition abroad is to determine whether the country you’ll need to depose your witness in is a party to the Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters, more commonly known as the Hague Evidence Convention.
In simple terms, if your deposition country is included in the list below, conducting a deposition there will be much easier and (in most cases) will not require any special permissions or advance communications with government agencies in the foreign country. There are some exceptions, especially if the matter has been filed in foreign as well as U.S. courts, but in most cases you can just fly in there and depose your witness. All you have to do is get your resources lined up (court reporter, videographer, interpreter, etc.), set up your deposition at any hotel or conference center, and you won’t have to worry about running afoul of local laws.
We will get into the Hague Evidence Convention in more detail in future articles. And you can always contact me directly should you have specific questions. In the meantime, here is a list of the parties to the convention, courtesy of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Evidence_Convention):

State	Date of Ratification	State	Date of Ratification
Argentina	08 May 1987	Australia	23 October 1992
Barbados	05 March 1981	Belarus	07 August 2001
Bosnia and Herzegovina	16 June 2008	Bulgaria	23 November 1999
China, People’s Republic of	08 December 1997	Cyprus	13 January 1983
Czech Republic	06 February 1976	Denmark	18 April 1972
Estonia	02 February 1996	Finland	09 March 1976
France	24 August 1972	Germany	18 March 1970
Greece	18 January 2005	Hungary	13 July 2004
Iceland	10 November 2008	India	07 February 2007
Israel	11 November 1977	Italy	06 February 1975
Kuwait	08 May 2002	Latvia	28 March 1995
Liechtenstein	12 November 2008	Lithuania	02 August 2000
Luxembourg	26 July 1977	Mexico	27 July 1989
Monaco	17 January 1986	Netherlands	08 April 1981
Norway	03 August 1972	Poland	13 February 1996
Portugal	18 March 1970	Romania	21 August 2003
Russian Federation	01 May 2001	Seychelles	07 January 2004
Singapore	27 October 1978	Slovakia	12 May 1976
Slovenia	18 November 2000	South Africa	08 July 1997
Spain	08 July 1997	Sri Lanka	30 October 2000
Sweden	21 April 1975	Switzerland	02 November 1994
Turkey	13 December 2000	Ukraine	01 February 2001
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland	18 March 1970	United States of America	27 July 1970
Venezuela	01 November 1993

 
A more detailed list, as well as the full text of the Hague Evidence Convention, can be found at the following link: Hague Evidence Convention