Wet Signature

For the vast majority of business contracts, electronic signatures have the same legal standing as wet signatures under ESIGN, eIDAS, and the ECA.

**When wet signatures are still required**

Each jurisdiction maintains a list of documents that must be physically signed. Common exclusions from e-signature laws include:

- **Wills and testaments** — Most US states require wet signatures and witnesses for probate - **Family law** — Adoption papers, divorce decrees in some states - **Real estate deeds** — Required in some US states and EU countries, though this is changing - **Court orders** — Judicial documents typically require physical signatures - **Notarised documents** — Traditionally require wet signatures, though remote online notarisation (RON) is growing - **Powers of attorney** — Some jurisdictions require wet signatures for durable powers of attorney

**Wet signature vs electronic signature: legal equivalence**

Under the ESIGN Act (US), eIDAS (EU), and ECA (UK), electronic signatures cannot be denied legal effect solely because they are electronic. This means for any document NOT on the exclusion list above, an electronic signature is legally identical to a wet signature.

**The practical case against wet signatures**

Wet signatures introduce friction: documents must be printed, signed, scanned, and returned. This process takes days and creates opportunities for lost documents, unclear scans, and version control issues. Electronic signatures eliminate all of these problems while providing stronger evidence of signing (through audit trails with timestamps, IP addresses, and cryptographic hashes) than a wet signature alone provides.

**The hybrid approach**

Many organisations use electronic signatures for routine contracts (NDAs, service agreements, employment offers) and reserve wet signatures for regulatory requirements. This is the pragmatic approach — use the simplest valid method for each document type.