What gives e-signatures legal standing/force in the United States?
<p>Having seen language in digital contract signing that basically say that you have to agree to use an e-signature as a signature, I feel like there's a bit of a problem in that needing to agree to use an e-signature suffers the same problem as needing to agree to use an e-signature, in that you sort of should, if you have to agree to digital signing, have an ever-backwards-stretching line of agreements that need to be agreed to...but this is obviously not how it works in practice, so how is it <em>actually</em> working?</p>

<p>Every state except New York, Illinois, and Washington has adopted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and those three states have adopted their own electronic signature laws. At the federal level, a law known as ESIGN provides that electronic signatures are valid, and preempts state laws unless the state has adopted UETA or has its own electronic signature law compatible with ESIGN. </p>

<p>One requirement of UETA is that both parties have to agree to use electronic signatures. It can't be forced on a party. If you send me a contract electronically and I electronically sign it, the question is whether I meant "I agree to be bound" or something else (like "I read it, this looks fine, send over a paper copy to sign"). By putting in the agreement "I agree to use an e-signature," it's hard to argue that you didn't mean to accept the contract. If you didn't mean to use your e-signature to accept, you shouldn't have put it on a contract saying "an e-signature is accepting the contract."</p>

<p>However, you don't necessarily need to put that in the contract for the e-signature to be valid. The question is the <em>intent</em> of the parties, and the court can look at all relevant evidence to decide whether both sides really meant to use e-signatures to accept the contract.</p>

<p>Contract validity does not depend on a signature at all, regardless of its type. Signatures are just a good way of showing that a given party agrees to the terms of a contract recorded by a given document, that shortcut the need for an independent third party to verify any and all contracts.</p>

<p>An agreement can be implied or explicit that the parties consider a digital signature to be <em>an</em> acceptable option, and use that to complete an agreement that the parties consider a digital signature to be <em>the only</em> acceptable option.</p>

united-states signature digital-contract