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How to eSign a document: online signature legitimateness for Legal Services in Australia

so our ecig nature is even legal like if you have a client you sign a document or a contract do they hold up in court and if you're going to send a client a contract how exactly do you send it to make sure it's legally binding these are questions I get all the time and in today's video I'm actually going to teach you two major things one is how to send and sign contracts legally so how do you you sign a contract and make sure that the signature is binding and enforceable and how do you actually send that contract to the client to make sure that it's enforceable in the end if you're an online coach creative or consultant that wants to make sure that you're legally sending contracts and signing contracts the right way then today's video is for you to learn legal tips for online business hit subscribe and make sure you pop back in every Tuesday from my bite-sized legal tips I'm Sam Vander villian an attorney turned entrepreneur and I help coaches creatives and consultants learn how to legally protect and grow online businesses I've helped thousands of you send thousands more contracts the right way online over the past three years and if you're ready to do that - then let's hop in so let's talk a signature first things first our e signatures even valid can you sign contracts that way and send them over email or use these different assigning platforms I get those questions a lot long story short in the u.s. yes we have had a law called the e-sign act on the book since 2000 that basically says in a nutshell that just because a contract is assigned or used an eSignature to sign a contract doesn't in and of itself make it invalid so in other words the e-sign act tells us that in the US you can assign contracts but they have to be assigned correctly and that's what I'm going to teach you today so what does it mean to e sign a contract correctly basically it means that the person who's signing the contract whether it's a client customer contractor whoever you're sending your contract to has to have affirmatively consented to be signing as opposed to you know snail mail signing a contract so you could maybe do this in a number of different ways and of course you could always consult your own lawyer to make sure that the process that you choose would actually be compliant with the e-sign act and therefore make your contracts enforceable but a couple of ideas I have are you know building something into your onboarding process so that when you send your client the email with probably a link to your contract and invoice you maybe have something in there that says that by signing they are affirmatively consenting to having a signed as opposed to signing in a different way and that if they don't agree that you signing they need to tell you before signing the contract you could even build it into your contract to have a little space where they have to initial or check something off saying that they have agreed to be signing your contract and by actually going through with it and signing it they'll you will consider that affirmative consent so those are just a couple of ideas that I had about how you could build that in to your business so besides just getting your customer or contractors affirmative consent to use the e sign process you also have to make sure that whatever platform or mechanism you're using to send your contracts to your clients or contractors is actually a sign Act compliant in other words that platform has to be able to provide you with some data some of the information behind the signature itself in case there's ever a problem so you could use another platform that's perhaps not a sign compliant and can't provide you with that kind of data but you might run into a problem later on where if there's an issue with that client you need to make sure that you get paid or they sue you or they won't hold up their end of the bargain of the contract you may have trouble enforcing it if you can't provide the data that the e-sign act asks for to comply with the law so in other words you want to look for a platform and I've linked to a couple of them below of course these are companies that are saying that they're ESInet compliant and I wouldn't be a very good lawyer if I didn't tell you that I myself can't confirm whether they actually are assigned i compliant but they are saying on their website that they comply and that they can provide the data that you need so what I want to do is encourage you that when you're looking for a platform to send your clients that contract and send them all their onboarding materials you're actually looking for whether or not they offer the kind of data that you would need if you needed to enforce your contract so check out those links below for a couple of the companies that I found that say that they are ESInet compliant and can provide you that data that you need ok so now that we know that these signatures are legally binding in the US as long as they're signed correctly I wanted to go over how to actually send those contracts to your clients because a lot of times people will even use the e sign are compliant platforms but they're not actually sending them correctly so when you send a contract to people you want to make sure that all of the signatures when you send it to your client are blank ok make sure you hear that again you should not sign the contract before you send it to your client all signature lines should be blank why is that well I'll save you a very long and boring legal story but basically I'll just tell you that contracts are what we call meetings of the mind right it's two people coming together to say hey this is these are the terms that I thought we agreed to and you're saying these are the terms that I thought we agreed to and the contract is the what we call in fancy lawyer terms the memorialization of those agreements right so the reason that you've send your contract blank to your client or to the contractor is because technically they should have the opportunity to review it and make sure that that does in fact represent the understanding of your agreement or of your work together and if they don't if there's something that they see in that contract that they don't like that they won't agree to that they won't do or comply with they have the opportunity to make edits or to say I want this part taken out or I don't agree with that or you made a mistake here right that's another big reason not to send a contract pre signed because sometimes you send contracts that have mistakes in them and now if you've signed it and the other person then signs it it's all the sudden binding and you've made a mistake right so let that other person look at it look it over make sure that everything is to their understanding of what your agreement actually was and then the process from there it goes like this you send it to your client blank they sign it if they agree with it right unless they've made any changes maybe you've gone back and forth once you go back and forth you still send it blank right they've now agreed to whatever final like variation that you've come to they sign it send it back to you you sign it and then send it back to them okay and so you can both eat sign it you can eat sign back and forth but you just want to send it blank have them you sign they send it back you II sign and then this is what I want you to do this is a bonus tip I want you to then either send by email or set up some sort of automation in the platform that you use send a completed and fully signed copy to your client or to the contractor for their records this is a really important what we call cya tip in the law because now I love the idea of you not only having this completed contract that the client had the opportunity to review now they've signed it they've sent it back to you but now you'll have a time stamp dated email to this person well you will say hey Julia here's this copy here's this completed and fully signed copy of our contract you can say lots of niceties like I'm really excited to work together or something like that but you can say here's this completed contract for your records and I think that's a great cya email to send so that you have yet another layer of proof that this person had the opportunity to review the contract they did and they agreed to it so was that helpful let me know in the comments below do you have any questions about how to send an e signed contracts properly you can just leave me a comment and I'll be sure to respond so now that you know all about how to e sign and properly send contracts to your clients if you have an online business you're probably wondering like what kind of contracts do I need and how do these contracts actually legally protect me like what do they have to have in them to legally protect me well I've created a free workshop for you it's completely on-demand it's a one-hour video training called the first five steps to legally protect and grow your online business I've dropped the link below you can sign up pick a day and a time that worked for you and I teach you my five step strategy in that video and one of the steps of that five step strategy is how contracts cover your bacon so I show you all about the mechanism of like how contracts actually work to legally protect you and what they actually need to have in them to do so so make sure you head on into the description underneath this video and click on the link to sign up for my free on-demand workshop take a day at a time that work for you before you go leave a comment let me know if this video was helpful obviously leave me a like if you liked the video and make sure you hit the subscribe button on your way out so you can receive all of my videos every Tuesday