Adobe Sign: Is It Legal? Your Questions Answered

Adobe Sign: what is it and why would you use it?

If you’re not yet familiar with Adobe Sign, it’s an electronic signature tool that lets you digitally sign documents, request e-signatures from others, track document progress and maintain detailed audit logs.

Adobe Sign offers great benefits to you and your organisation: collecting signatures within minutes rather than days speeds up your workflows and makes you more efficient, document tracking and auditing gives you greater compliance visibility, and with no paper needed, it’s simply a greener way of doing things. You can even make use of Adobe Sign’s APIs to develop custom applications to not only speed up your workflows, but to fully automate them.

However, the most common question is still ‘is it legal?’.

The legalities of Adobe Sign & e-signatures

Adobe Sign is legally binding in most cases and in many countries. We say most cases due to a small number of highly sensitive documents still requiring a physical signature by law, such as wills and property transfers in England and Wales. But for most scenarios, including consent forms, employment contracts and purchase orders where a witness is not required, Adobe Sign’s e-signatures are legally binding.

Of course, we always recommend that you familiarise yourself with the local e-signature laws in your country or region, especially when handling highly sensitive or complex legal documents. Adobe has published a handy, user-friendly guide on worldwide e-signature laws.

Strict company policies to meet?

Although Adobe Sign meets and even exceeds required security and legal compliance standards, you may still have some reservations when it comes to satisfying your organisation’s rigorous data security and compliance policies.

In these cases, you may wish to make use of Adobe Sign’s stronger, highly secure advanced authentication methods. These include the options to protect documents with passwords and/or private access codes and even requiring the recipient to upload an image of a government-issued ID document.

In fact, some of the UK’s largest organisations have adopted Adobe Sign as their trusted e-signature solution. TSB Bank, which deal with extremely confidential and highly sensitive information, make use of these advanced authentication methods by requiring customers wanting to reactivate their accounts to e-sign a form using Adobe Sign, together with providing a smartphone photograph of themselves and their ID to prove their genuine identity.

Also, Adobe Sign documents are certified as originals and cannot be edited beyond what is requested, so if your document has been altered or tampered with, you’ll be informed immediately. Plus, you’ll have a full, detailed audit log that tracks the document from start to finish, including records of who created the document, who it was sent to and when, when the recipients opened and signed it and when it was returned completed.

Start benefitting from Adobe Sign today!

Having seen how you and your organisation can benefit from using e-signatures, get in touch with our friendly team of experts today by calling 01974 200 201 or emailing sales@pugh.co.uk for more information or to discuss what Adobe Sign solution would be best suited for you.

As an Adobe Platinum Certified Reseller and Education Elite Partner, Pugh are an ideal Adobe Sign partner to support you in enabling a modern e-signature solution that will transform the way you work.

Further reading

Adobe’s guide on worldwide e-signature laws

Adobe’s detailed guide on ensuring legal and authenticated e-signatures

Pinsent Masons article on e-signature laws in England and Wales

Adobe Sign FAQ