The Danish post office announced that it will no longer accept or deliver letters. The writing has long been on the wall: paper documents are deprecated. Given that a forty-page contract would probably not qualify as a letter—but then again, there’s Wilde’s De Profundis—and so could still be delivered, even in Denmark, as a “small package,” the day of digital-only contracts is upon us an has been for a long time.

It’s probably enough to include a short contract provision—even a sub-subsection, along the lines of, “The parties agree that this agreement may be digitally signed.” But what fun is that?

Even though your client will be bound by this short, clear sentence, he won’t be happy. After all, he can write short clear sentences himself. From a lawyer, he expects something more. That something more follows and guarantees that your bill will otherwise be paid. There’s no way your client could come up with something like this himself. Oh sure, he could cut and paste, but he already knows that’s dangerous. And he could try AI and hope he’s not caught in an AI hallucination.

Need to include a provision for digitally signing an agreement?

“Electronic Signature: By electronically completing the fields in the signature section below, you, (i) are agreeing to use electronic signatures to execute the Agreement, (ii) are agreeing to being subject to the provisions of the U.S. E-SIGN Act (i.e., the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN, 15 U.S.C. ch.96) and (iii) the country in which your company resides is listed herein and has enacted legislation accepting electronic signatures as enforceable. Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Republic Of, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Province Of China, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay.”

ps: note that Saudi Arabia is not mentioned.