Electronic Signature Software for Lawyers: PDFpen as an Option

Electronic signature software for lawyers allows you to do just this: sign. Professional PDF editors enable you to sign and much more.

Collecting wet signatures was never practical. Even before the pandemic, bringing people together to sign a document could be difficult, especially when the parties involved were in different cities or just plain busy. 

Of course, using a courier service was and continues to be an option, but a costly one—not just because of the money spent on paper, ink, and the service itself, but because of how much time the process takes—over a week, according to e-signature platform DocuSign. 

And that’s not counting the possibility of human error. When a person fails to add their signature to a page or signs in the wrong place, it delays things even more.

A slow turnaround is bad for business. It gives potential clients time to explore other options and change their minds. 

There’s also the issue of convenience. More and more, customers want the ease and agility of the digital world reflected in all of their day-to-day transactions.

Banks, for example, are facing increasing pressure to adapt to customer demands for easy, convenient, and fully digital services. 

In a recent press release, James Follette, an executive at financial software company Fenergo said: “Customers are naturally going to gravitate to banks that provide the same low-touch experience as the consumer digital services they are familiar with."

The same goes for law firms. And the demands may not stop there. Many clients prefer to do business with companies that show social and environmental responsibility. 

Meanwhile, the average lawyer can generate up to 100,000 pages per year. Relying on wet signatures means relying on paper when everything points to a paperless future. 

Law firms that want to go paperless have an alternative: electronic signatures.

Adopting electronic signature software reduces turnaround time, saves money, increases efficiency, improves service, and is better for the environment.

Best of all, electronic signatures are legally valid and enforceable not just in the US but in nearly every industrialized country in the world—see DocuSign’s eSignature Legality Guide for details.

E-signing documents is simple, too. Clients can produce e-signatures by scanning or taking a photo of their original signatures or use a drawing program. Once the image is produced, all they need to do is add it to the document, making edits as needed.

A PDF editor such as PDFpen gives you the ability to electronically sign documents by: 

• Inserting and editing an image 
• Creating an interactive field, then using your finger or astylus 
• Using an Adobe Approved Trusted List (AATL) certificate

In the video below, lawyer David Sparks explains how signing in PDFpen works:

0000017f-22e7-dd42-a5ff-eaef89680000 Our advanced PDF editor, PDFpenPro, also integrates with DocuSign. You can request e-signatures from clients via DocuSign directly from the PDFpenPro interface—see PDFpenPro-DocuSign Integration: Request Signatures via DocuSign for details.

But there's so much more a PDF editor can do. You can use it to redact sensitive information, perform OCR on scans, and password-protect files.

“PDFpen does an excellent job of giving you the basic tools necessary for inserting a scanned image of your handwritten signature. In fact, PDFpen offers a simple workflow to create a transparent background on your signature. You have to jump through a few more steps to do the same in Adobe Acrobat.”
- Brett Burney, Macs in Law

“The Library makes it easy to save the signature with the transparent background. Select your signature in the document, then click the + in the bottom left corner of the Library palette. Next time you need to use your signature, you can just drag it into your document.”
- Scott Danielson, envatotuts+

“Another nice feature in PDFPen is the ability to use your digital signature. You can use a scanned copy of your signature and literally drop it in a PDF document before returning it to the sender.”
- David Sparks, MacSparky

There’s an easy way to sign documents quickly from anywhere—no meetings, deliveries, printing, or scanning involved. Before you purchase electronic signature software for your law firm, see what an advanced PDF editor can do. You may find that this multipurpose tool is a better investment for your law practice.

Download a30-day free trial of PDFpen.

To learn more about signing with PDFpen/Pro, the PDF editor that is an alternative to electronic signature software for lawyers, check out:

• [Video] Sign PDF Documents
• How to Sign a Document Using PDFpen
• Save Your Signature to the PDFpen Library