Why Electronic Signatures Hold Up in Court

Imagine you’ve successfully collected multiple electronic signatures through your website. That’s a win for sure, but what happens when one of those documents becomes evidence in a courtroom trial? Will the e-signature hold up in a legal proceeding? Here’s how you can make sure.

What makes electronic signatures legally valid in court

The first thing to understand is what makes a digital signature legally valid. You may have watched every season of Matlock, but real-world courts might have a different idea of what constitutes a legal e-Signature. Here’s what your signatures need to comply:

Intent to Sign

The signer needs to show a clear intent to sign the document, similar to a handwritten signature.

Consent to Electronic Transaction

All parties must consent to conduct business electronically — this is often formalized through disclosures and acceptance procedures within the signature platform.

Attribution & Authentication

There must be a way to attribute the signature to the signer, often through methods like email verification, multi-factor authentication, IP tracking, or other secure identification measures.

Integrity

The document and the signature must be protected against tampering. This generally involves secure, tamper-evident storage and audit trails that log actions such as opening, signing, and time-stamping documents.

Record Retention

Electronic signature records must be retained in an accessible, secure, and unalterable manner for the legally required period, accessible to all parties involved.

If all these requirements sound daunting, well, they can be. Obviously it’s not as simple as collecting a signature in a form field. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to accomplish all of those goals — but we’re not quite done with the court requirements yet.

Essential requirements for court-admissible electronic signatures

In a nutshell, courts assess e-signature validity using the same core principles as wet signatures. However, they can sometimes require even stronger evidence of authenticity. It depends on the nature of the case and the way the court views digital signatures in general.

Key features that support admissibility include:

• Audit Logs: Digital audit trails documenting when, how, and by whom a document was signed.
• Proof of Identity: Reliable attribution through email, IP, device, or designated secure channels.
• Document Copies to All Parties: All signers must receive identical, final documents verifying what was signed.
• Tamper Protection: Systems must ensure documents are not altered post-signature, often by cryptographic means or secure infrastructure.

Some courts or specific types of documents may have stricter requirements, such as for sworn testimony or notarizations, often requiring a wet signature or more robust verification, such as a physical stamp.

It’s important to note that not all documents are eligible for e-signatures. For example, certain wills, some court filings, and property transfers may be excluded.

To sum up, electronic signatures are generally valid in court if proper intent, consent, authentication, auditability, and secure retention are documented and the requirements of applicable federal and state laws are met.

Compliance requirements don’t appear out of thin air. Let’s talk about where they originate.

Legal framework and compliance requirements

In the European Union, e-Signature compliance is based on eIDAS.

eIDAS stands for “electronic IDentification, Authentication, and trust Services.” It’s a regulation passed in 2014 that sets the standards for eSignatures, digital certificates, and other authentication mechanisms. There are three categories of electronic signatures under eIDAS:

• Simple Electronic Signature (SES): This is the most basic form of electronic signature. It has minimal security requirements. This can be ideal for many simple business contracts.
• Advanced Electronic Signature (AdES): AdES can be used to verify the signer’s identity and ensure that the document has not been altered. It carries enhanced cryptographic protection and signer identification.
• Qualified Electronic Signature (QES): Based on a qualified certificate generated from a designated device, QES offers the highest level of security. Legally, it’s considered the equivalent to a handwritten signature.

If you’re collecting electronic signatures in a global market, they need to be compliant with eIDAS.

In the United States, the legal framework is the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, or UETA. According to Thomson Reuters, the UETA is:

“An act published by the Uniform Law Commission in 1999 giving electronic signatures and records (including contracts) the same legal effect as traditional handwritten signatures and paper documents under the statute of frauds. The UETA only applies in certain types of transactions and only when the parties have agreed to conduct the transaction electronically.

An electronic signature can be any electronic sound, symbol, or process that is both:

• Attached to or associated with a record or contract.
• Executed or adopted with the intent to sign the record.

An electronic record can be any information that is created, used, or stored in a medium other than paper.”

When a U.S. court makes a decision on an electronic signature, it’s following the guidelines set by the UETA. So are there instances when a digitally-signed document may not be considered legally binding? Let’s talk about some reasons that might happen.

When electronic signatures might not hold up in court

There are several circumstances where electronic signatures might not hold up in court. Most of them follow the requirements we’ve already covered, so let’s get into how not meeting those requirements can affect a document in court.

Doubt About Authenticity or Tampering

If the court finds any reason to doubt the authenticity of the e-signature, such as evidence of tampering or weaknesses in security, audit logs, or authentication, it may declare the signature inadmissible.

Lack of Proper Consent or Intent

If the parties did not knowingly consent to use electronic signatures or intent to sign electronically is unclear, enforceability can be challenged.

Weak or Absent Authentication

Insufficient identity verification, like lack of multi-factor authentication or reliable proof tying the signature to the signer, increases the risk of rejection in court.

Certain Document Types Are Excluded

Federal and state laws exclude electronic signatures for some documents, including wills, testamentary trusts, certain family law papers (e.g., adoption, divorce), some contracts under the Uniform Commercial Code, court orders and filings that specifically require wet signatures, utility cancellation notices, and a few others.

Failure to Provide Audit Trails or Proper Record-Keeping

Courts expect secure, tamper-evident audit trails and retention of signed records. Lack of these may weaken a signature’s legal standing.​

Compliance with Local Rules

Some courts or jurisdictions have specific requirements for electronic signatures, and local procedural rules may mandate wet signatures in certain cases, such as for sworn testimony or affidavits.

In short, electronic signatures may not hold up in court if there are issues with authenticity, consent, verification, document type exclusions, or failure to meet local procedural rules. Proper security, audit logs, identity verification, and adherence to legal frameworks are critical to their enforceability.

Best practices for implementing legally-binding electronic signatures

Maintaining a system for collecting legally-binding e-Signatures may sound challenging, particularly if you’re not an attorney. Let’s turn the requirements I’ve outlined into an actionable list:

1. Get consent to conduct business electronically. This can be a statement on a form with a simple checkbox that acknowledges consent.
2. Provide a method that shows clear intent to sign. This can be a signature box where a signer can either draw or type their signature.
3. Require the signer to verify their identity through email or SMS verification, or collect their IP address during the signing process.
4. Retain records by saving the form entry on your server. Also consider sending the signed form back to the signer in PDF format.
5. Ensure that the e-Signature platform you use is built with UETA and eIDAS compliance in mind.

If you want to be sure that the electronic signatures you’ve collected will hold up in court — if it ever comes to that — you need to find a reliable platform that’s robust enough to handle the requirements. There’s an easy solution: Legal Signing for Gravity Forms.

The Legal Signing plugin provides you with a complete system to collect legally-binding signatures through your WordPress site. It ticks all the boxes above, and then some. For example, Legal Signing helps you:

• Sign documents wherever you are. Mobile, tablet, desktop — signers can endorse documents anywhere!
• Create documents quickly and easily. Automatically generate PDFs from your existing contract templates.
• Retain documents securely. Signed contracts are exclusively stored on your own servers to protect all your confidential information.
• Generate as many documents as you want. You get unlimited documents and users.
• Full audit trail for every signing party.

Strengthen your electronic signature process today

Want to feel confident that your electronic signatures will hold up in court? With Legal Signing for Gravity Forms, you can be sure that signed contracts on your WordPress site are legally-binding and fully compliant in both the U.S. and the EU.

Give yourself and your clients the ultimate in convenience and peace of mind. Try Legal Signing and see how easy it can be.