Electronic execution

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The Unless the instrument is something like a deed or lease which has formal legal requirements, then digital signatures are fine and, in fact, in many respects better than a scanned handwritten signature.

The main reason we haven’t adopted them before now are systems limitations and (more to the point) institutional inertia.

End of the day a signature – any signature - is basically evidence to prove an agreement or instruction.

The key question, always, is “how confident do I feel that this instruction/consent is genuine, so I can prove it to a court later if I need to”.

Doesn’t matter if it is a hand-inked signature, a digital signature, or a series of (unambiguous!!) semaphore messages from a person standing on a distant hill whom you sincerely and plausibly believe to be your client. If that is your client, and you have a record of it, it will be very hard for your client to argue later it didn’t give you the instruction in question.

If you get deeds let us know and we can give you chapter and verse, but I doubt you would see execution of deeds in the normal cut and thrust of operational interactions between firm and client.