PDF for Lawyers

Fax signatures - how secure are they?

Tristian Wilson was released from a Memphis jail on the authority of a forged fax message. So why, then, do we place so much faith in fax signatures? That's the excellent question posed by security expert Bruce Schneier.

Electronic signatures gaining acceptance

Today was a first for me.  I received my renewal application for my professional liability insurance by email.  It was a PDF form, which is not surprising.  What was surprising is that the signature line was set to accept an electronic signature.  I had already set up my Acrobat program to input this, so it was easy to do with a click or two.  Once I signed it I was prompted to click a button to email it back in, which I did.  This was the first time I've been able to easily sign a form like this. 

I'll bet there aren't too many lawyers who signed the form in this manner.  But I'll bet that the number will be higher next year.  Have any of you had the opportunity to electronically sign a PDF form?

Be more efficient: scan your signature into your form letters

No one should print out a letter to sign it unless it's absolutely necessary. For example, if you plan to send a letter to someone by email then you should have your signature already included in your form letter. That way you can create a PDF and email it without ever printing it out. Even if you do print out letters, having your signature scanned in and loaded into your standard form of letter can save lots of time. Here's a good article on how to scan in your signature.

How to make a pretty electronic signature

I've written before about how lawyers' obsession with having their actual signatures on e-filed documents can lead to trouble.  Now, from Rick Borstein's excellent blog comes a great post about how to create a transparent signature stamp.  I was alerted to this by Dennis Kennedy whose post has some great resources links to information about electronic signatures.

PDF Security -- How-To Series

PDFZone has a 5 part series on PDF security, signatures, and the like.

The topics cover Preferences, Creating a Digital ID, Adding an Electronic Signature, Certifying and Signing a PDF, and Adding Passwords. The series has run (so far) from Feb. 19 through Mar. 7, 2006, so make sure you look back far enough.

Highly recommended!

~~Dave

How do electronic signatures work?

This is a complex answer, but many people ask so we feel compelled to offer an explanation.  Or should I say, offer a link to an explanation (courtesy of 'How Stuff Works').  For more information about digital signatures, check out our posts on the topic.

Profile of Adobe's President

The Economist has a great profile of Bruce Chitzen, the head of Adobe Systems.  He's a big fan of using PDF files to improve government efficiency, and spoke in Brussels about this, noting that:

Belgium will be the first country in the European Union to give its citizens electronic ID cards. And by plugging these cards into the USB ports of computers that have Reader, Belgians will soon be able to “sign”—ie, digitally authenticate and seal—PDF documents such as tax forms, mortgage applications, patent approvals and anything else that today requires a signature in ink.

Yeah, it would be nice to have wider recognition of digital signatures in the United States.  The physical act of signing paper is inefficient compared to digital signatures; of course, we seem to regard the learning curve associated with digital signatures as unsurmountable.

Electronic Signatures - they do exist don't they?

"At last count, forty-nine states, the U.S. Federal Government, and the governments of over fifteen countries have enacted or are currently considering some form of electronic signature legislation," write Thomas Smedinghoff and Ruth Hill Bro, two knowlegeable lawyers at Baker & McKenzie.  My question is: what's the count on lawyers actually using electronic signatures in their practice?

The other day I heard a transactional lawyer explaining the nuances and complexities of various deals that she's been involved in.  She explained that she rarely needs to come to the office because the nature of her practice is so dependent on email and phone conversations.  She said that it is rare for the parties to actually meet in one room to hash through changes and then formalize the agreement with signatures that they affix in each other's presence.  So how do they handle the signatures?

She said that the parties execute signatures on paper and then scan them to PDF and send them to the other side's lawyers to hold in escrow until the deal is formalized.  What about using electronic signatures, I asked?

"We don't do that," she said.  Followed by "what are they exactly?"  Well, the long answer is contained in the aforementioned article on Electronic Signature Legislation.  In that article the authors point out that:

"electronic signature legislation can, and perhaps should, be designed and enacted to accomplish two goals: (1) to remove barriers (actual and perceived) to e-commerce, and (2) to enable and promote the desirable public policy goal of e-commerce by helping to establish the "trust" and the "predictability" needed by parties doing business online."

Yes, those should be the goals.  But I think it's fair to say that legislation cannot remove the biggest barrier in the realm of electronic signatures: changing habits.  Really smart lawyers do deals everyday, and they use cellphones, blackberrys, computers, and online collaborative workspaces.  But somehow they can't get their brains around electronic signatures.  Why is that? 

I suggest it's because the act of signing a document is so simple, and so ingrained in our consciousness, that switching to a new mode that requires not only 'technology' but also 'legislation' is just too much for us.  Imagine if technology and legislation were requird to do finger paintings.  Not even the five year olds could handle that.  And their minds are completely open to new ideas.

One day people will actually use electronic signatures (maybe around the same time we finally colonize Mars).  But for now it's fascinating to see how far they will go to preserve the ritual of affixing their scrawl to a piece of paper.  I'm sure the cave painters in Lascaux weren't eager to work in a new medium either.

Great article on using Digital Signatures with PDF files

Karl De Abrew has a great article entitled Using Digital Signatures with Acrobat. It begins by pointing out the folly of signing things by hand, which isn't folly to most people because it is a routine act that no one really thinks about. Well, almost no one:

"Run that past me one more time ... You want me to take pen in hand and scrawl a squiggly line on a thin slice of dead tree as a form of unique identification? Please! I'd rather use a wax seal from WaxEnt.com."

I'm not sure I'm willing to take up using wax seals, but I think that traditional signatures are a bottleneck to more efficient communication. It's a shame more people don't know about the benefits of digital signatures.

Electronic transactions - why aren't there more of them?

Way back when Bill Clinton was President he signed into law legislation that was supposed to pave the way for electronic transactions. Well, Clinton's been gone for quite awhile now and I haven't noticed a big boom in electronic transactions. Why is that?

Well, for one thing, no one is really sure how it all works. The other day on a PDF E-mail discussion group someone wanted to know if it was okay to keep records in PDF form; the fellow's lawyer had told him he had to keep his documents on a WORM drive to preserve their admissibility in court (which is completely wrong). So when I say "no one is really sure how this all works" I'm including lawyers. But then lawyers aren't known for their prowess in making transactions work more smoothly.

Actually, there is another problem with all these electronic records and transactions: how they work depends on context in which they are used. But let's not make this complicated. The simple truth is that, if parties to a transaction agree that digital signatures work, then the digital signatures are okay. If they agree that the transaction will be completely electronic that's okay too. But if one of them has a penchant for paper, then that's the way the transaction will be carried out. Of course, the guy with the penchant for electronic stuff can just scan the papers and know that he is in all likelihood going to satisfy his record-keeping requirements. So the world has indeed been nicely paved for electronic transactions.

How do I know all of this? Well, for starters I asked my law professor friend Henry Gabriel. He was the reporter for the Louisiana Electronic Transactions Act (PDF), and was on the drafting committee of NCCUSL, which created the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act. He was also the reporter for the revision to the UCC Sales and Lease provisions and the chair of the UCC committee to revise the law of documents of title- which provides for electronic documents of title.

Bottom line? He knows a lot of stuff about electronic transactions. And he has graciously shared his Powerpoint presentation, which lays it all out. If you want a clear explanation of how it all this electronic transaction stuff works click here. If you don't then, by all means, keep shuffling paper.

Digital Signatures with PDF

For some reason digital signatures are hard to grasp. Why is that? Well, it's because to understand why digital signatures work the way they do it's best to have a rudimentary understanding computer security. So let's forget about computer security and start with something you know: your regular signature that you put on contracts, and checks, and routine correspondence.

Your regular signature is a form of document security. You probably don't think about it that much, but that's what a signature is. When you physically sign a document a person who later reads the document can assume that: (1) you've physically inspected the document before you signed it, and; (2) you accept the document in the form it was in when you signed it (obviously if it was altered after you signed it you wouldn't accept it with the alterations).

So now let's talk about what a digital signature is used for. Well, obviously a digital signature has to accomplish at least as much as a physical signature. And it does. In fact, the security of a digitally signed document is much better than a physically signed document. Of course, the act of signing a document digitally is a little more cumbersome too. At least, at first. So let's talk about reading digitally signed documents.

Reading a digitally signed document is easy. Still when you read a digitally signed document you will encounter a new concept: signature validation. Well, maybe it's not really new; but it seems new, or at least strange. Again, let's talk about how it works in the world of paper.

When you get a document signed by Joe Somebody that you never met you just accept that the signature on the document is his. From there on out, if you are interested in making sure that Joe Somebody really signed it, you just compare later signatures to the one on the first document that you received. I'm assuming you never met Joe because any security system has to account for that common scenario.

The weakness in that scenario is pretty obvious. Someone could pretend to be Joe Somebody and send you a letter with their signature. Later, if they sent you more letters, you'd rely on them as though they were from Joe because they had a signature that you had decided was Joe's. Scams have been premised on this exact scenario. But in most business correspondence the opportunity for a scam is low and we accept signatures from people we've never met without too much worry. In other words, we use common sense to guide our suspicions.

Computers, however, don't have common sense to guide their trust mechanisms. They only have rigid mathematical rules. So the trust system that a computer can use has to be based on rigid rules. That's the bad news in digital signatures; they are a little more cumbersome.

The good news is that once you automate the process is it is not that much more cumbersome to digitally sign an electronic document that it is to physically sign a paper document. And the digitally signed document is extremely reliable. Always and without fail. Whereas the paper document, even in the most rigorous of schemes, is fairly easily forged or manipulated for nefarious purposes.

To illustrate how this works, I'd like to show you an example of digitally signed document. But first, if you can, right click on this link and save the file to your desktop. This is a digital certificate that you will need to validate the document that I have signed. Now, to see the digitally signed document, click here. The rest of the information is in that document.

Update: Here is an excellent article on using digital signatures with PDF files.