Innovative solutions to everyday life operations are becoming increasingly more important. Developers are creating tools to enhance lives and bring about efficiency in how law firms run their operations. One of the solutions that has been gaining traction in the legal world over the last few years in the business world is electronic signatures.
Electronic signatures enable you to sign documents digitally. You don’t have to be physically present to sign your contract or get approval.
In this blog, we will attempt to give you a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of electronic signatures.
The Pros
Increased Customer Reach
For many global businesses, geographical location of clients can often be an issue. The document handling process often becomes a challenge as well as expensive since you or the client often have to fly to another country to get the other party to physically sign the necessary contracts.
Save Money
Electronic signatures can be extremely cost-effective. As law firms handle a large amount of documents daily, the cost reduction can be significant due to the elimination of the costs associated with printing, sending and storing agreements.
Authenticity and Integrity
For law firms, particularly those involved in high risk and high value transactions, digital signatures via e-signing platforms such as DocuSign provide the greatest level of assurance that the signatory is who they say they are, and that the signed document is authentic.
Improving document accuracy
It can be frustrating to receive a document back only to realise the signer has missed a page or forgotten to fill out some vital information. With electronic signature software, you can enable mandatory fields. That means you can be sure your documents are 100% complete every time based on your pre-defined template or specific requirements.
Integration Opportunities
A market leader such as DocuSign provides a huge range of integrations so law firms can benefit from eSignatures without ever leaving their favourite DMS and business productivity solutions. A DocuSign partner can integrate DocuSign APIs to allow seamless electronic signatures within a document management environment whilst improving governance and compliance for the entire DocuSign transaction.
The Cons
Unwilling Customers
Although eSignatures have many benefits, some people are still reluctant to adopt it. Some could be unwilling because they prefer to stick with the traditional ways of handling businesses.
Limitations
Although eSignatures can be widely used, some documents still require a wet ink signature – one notable example being a will. Although temporary legislation to allow for the remote execution and witnessing of wills came into force during the pandemic, the government decided not to allow e-signatures of wills as part of this temporary legislation (although this is under review).
Security Issues
Any online solution will come with security risks, for example if the developer has not invested in data security aspects such as privacy and protection, and anti-virus/ anti-malware tools.
Appetite for risk security varies from firm to firm and is dependent on both the industry in which the organization operates and the corresponding legal and regulatory requirements. DocuSign completely understand this. Their market leading eSignature solution is researched, designed, and developed with security as a top priority and built with configurable security in mind.
If your firm is looking to get started with an eSignature solution, contact us today and see how we can help!
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