E-signature legality

1. The United States

Two laws govern electronic signatures in the United States: the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN, 15 U.S.C. § 7001) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), adopted in some form by 49 states. Both say the same core thing: a signature, contract, or record may not be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic.

New York has not adopted UETA and instead applies its own Electronic Signatures and Records Act (ESRA), which reaches the same result for most commercial agreements.

For transactions with consumers, ESIGN § 101(c) places additional duties on the party sending the document, including a disclosure and a consent that reasonably demonstrates the consumer can access the electronic records. AnySign records the consent; making the disclosure fit your transaction is yours to do.

2. What AnySign records

Enforceability turns on evidence: that the signer intended to sign, agreed to sign electronically, can be attributed to the signature, and that the document has not changed since. AnySign records each of these by default:

• Explicit intent: the signer acts on their own tokenised link and applies each field themselves.
• ESIGN- and UETA-aligned consent, captured before the first field is filled and stored verbatim per signer with timestamp, IP address, user agent, and language.
• Attribution: every view, consent, field and signature event is written to an append-only, hash-chained audit trail, where each event hashes the one before it.
• Integrity: the executed PDF is sealed with a PAdES certification signature and a DocMDP lock, and a Certificate of Completion travels with it.

The audit trail is retrievable at any time through GET /v1/envelopes/{id}/audit_trail, which returns chain_valid alongside the events.

3. Documents that need their own review

ESIGN and UETA exclude some categories outright. Others are permitted but carry form, notarisation, or recording requirements that an e-signature platform alone does not satisfy. Before sending any of the following through AnySign, take your own advice:

• Wills, codicils, and testamentary trusts — excluded by statute.
• Most family law documents, including divorce and adoption papers.
• Court orders, notices, and filings, unless the court's own rules allow electronic execution.
• Notices of default, foreclosure, eviction, repossession, or cancellation of utility services or health and life insurance benefits.
• The Uniform Commercial Code, other than Articles 2 and 2A.
• Documents requiring notarisation, witnessing, or government recording, including most real estate conveyances.
• Product recall notices and documents governing the transport or handling of hazardous materials.
• Regulated categories that carry their own rules, such as banking and lending files, insurance documents, and healthcare or FDA clinical trial records.

4. Outside the United States

In the European Union and the United Kingdom, eIDAS recognises three levels. A simple electronic signature (SES) may not be denied admissibility for being electronic; an advanced electronic signature (AES) adds a unique link to the signer and tamper detection; only a qualified electronic signature (QES), made with a certificate issued by a qualified trust service provider, carries automatic equivalence to a handwritten signature across member states.

AnySign issues SES today. AES, using a per-signer one-time passcode recorded beside the signature, is in development for the Business plan and is not yet available. QES is on the roadmap and is not offered.

Some national laws still require ink or a notarial deed for specific instruments — German employment termination under § 623 BGB is a common example. Where your counterparty or your jurisdiction requires QES or a written form, an SES collected through AnySign will not meet it.

5. Limits of this page

Electronic signature law changes, and we cannot guarantee that everything here is current or correct for your situation. Nothing on this page is a warranty that a particular signature, document, or transaction is enforceable — that depends on facts outside the platform, including the signer's identity, authority, and capacity, and on whether the underlying agreement was validly formed.

Questions about this page can go to [email protected]. Questions about your own transaction should go to your own lawyer.