The Akron Legal News

Login | March 28, 2024

Make sure the paperless office includes e-signatures

RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers

Published: August 22, 2014

So, the office is on its way to being totally paperless, right?

Except that every document that needs a signature has to be printed out first and signed, and then somehow transported to wherever it needs to go.

Not very efficient. Or necessary, in many cases. If you’re going to go paperless (and everybody is), you need to get the electronic signature process together.

Not all documents are appropriate to electronic signatures, of course. But many are. The Ohio Bar Association says: “The federal Electronic Signatures In Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN) provides that electronic signatures are valid for commercial transactions throughout the United States and for all international commercial transactions based on United States law.” That law has been in effect since 2000.

So who are we to argue?

E-SIGN only applies to commercial transactions. It does not apply to wills, trusts, divorces, evictions and other like documents. But it did preempt all state laws requiring physical signatures on commercial paper.

There are several e-signature cloud-based services available on the market. They all have a cost, generally less than $50 a month. Typically, vendors offer different levels of functionality for different costs. As always, take a test drive before you commit.

HelloSign syncs with all Google functions, even allowing e-signatures right in Gmail. It also syncs with Dropbox, Box and Evernote.

Adobe checks in with EchoSign. It is integrated with all Adobe products, so, if you have an Adobe/ PDF office, this would be the one to get.

The primary player in the real estate market is DocuSign. If you do a lot of real estate, you probably already know that.

Another service is RightSignature, an encrypted e-signature service that syncs with Amazon Web Services and Clio.

What about notarization? Ohio has a law for e-notarization, which allows for the onsite notarization of a PDF or other computer-based document. The law does not allow remote notarization (like over a webcam or something).

Risk of forgery? OBAR says that the risk of e-forgery is no greater (or lesser) than the risk of physical forgery, especially with encryption.


[Back]