The File
Dikigorikos Syllogos Athinon (DSA)
Professional body, and a certification counter · Ακαδημίας 60, 106 79 Αθήνα
Where a lawyer’s signature on a translation gets certified — and the body still asking, unsuccessfully, for the compulsory-lawyer rule to come back.
- Full name
- Δικηγορικός Σύλλογος Αθηνών (ΔΣΑ)
- Address
- Ακαδημίας 60, 106 79 Αθήνα
- Telephone
- 210 3398102-3; contracts 210 3398117; protocol and contract certification 210 3398118
- info@dsa.gr
- Public opening hours
- Not published The association publishes none. A secondary source suggests 08:00 to 14:00 and we are not printing it as fact.
- What it does for a foreign buyer
- Certifies the genuineness of a lawyer’s signature on a translation Needed where a private translation will not be accepted abroad without the seal of the Hellenic Republic. Certified copies and title searches are the work of the individual lawyer, not of the association.
- The €80,000 rule is dead
- Lawyer attendance at a property transfer has been optional since 1 January 2014 Law 4093/2012 introduced the compulsory-attendance rule above €80,000 — and paragraph 3 of the same provision made attendance optional for all parties from 1 January 2014. It was in force for fourteen months. Numerous current Greek pages, including a chamber of commerce, still state the threshold as live.
- What IS compulsory
- A notary A Greek property transfer requires a notary. It does not require a lawyer. Those two facts are constantly conflated.
- The lawyers’ channel
- portal.olomeleia.gr How a lawyer files residence permit applications and books delivery appointments, as against the citizen route through the immigration portal.
The Athens Bar Association sits on Akadimias, a few doors from the legalisation counter, and most foreign buyers will touch it exactly once — to have a lawyer’s signature on a translation certified so that a document carries the seal of the Hellenic Republic abroad.
The rule everyone repeats
Law 4093/2012 made lawyer attendance compulsory for the acquirer of a property above €80,000. The third paragraph of the same provision then states, verbatim, that from 1 January 2014 attendance is optional for all contracting parties.
The current Lawyers’ Code regulates only what happens if a lawyer does attend. It imposes no obligation. And the profession itself was still lobbying for reinstatement in 2025.
It matters because the fee is a percentage and the figure is quoted at people as though it were unavoidable. What a purchase on this coast actually costs, line by line, is set out separately.
