We’ve been big fans of digital signing for more than 7 years, starting to use and recommend it after we got to know the team at Secured Signing in 2017. I wrote a blog about it at the time: Digital signing for lawyers – Secured Signing and LawHawk Join Forces.

In 2020, when COVID hit, lawyers were suddenly challenged to work out how to sign documents electronically, and I was asked to participate in a webinar for the New Zealand Law Society on short notice. I believe more than 3,500 lawyers attended the webinar (by far my largest audience on a webinar!). We demonstrated a Secured Signing digital signing workflow, and I involved my 10 year old daughter to show how simple it was. I mustn’t have done a very good job, as people commented that they thought it looked too hard for lawyers to learn, and I don’t believe there was any major uptake. Many lawyers instead watched each other sign documents with pen and paper via video call and swapped counterparts later.

Things are changing, though.

Digital Signing for In-House Legal Teams

For the past few years, we’ve seen more interest from in-house legal teams in self-service workflows that incorporate digital signing. We found that AdobeSign and DocuSign both have connectors for Microsoft PowerAutomate, which makes them very easy to connect in this way, as you can see in this two-minute example video.

Digital Signing for Transactions

I had always struggled to work out how transactional law firms could best use digital signing when there is another law firm involved, as the other law firm usually controls the signing process with their clients (after reviewing and confirming the documents). However, I recently came across a law firm that regularly acts for lenders. They encourage the borrower’s lawyers to use digital signing, but it’s the lender’s law firm that sets up the signing meeting so the borrower’s lawyers don’t have to learn how to do it. They can attend and watch their clients sign without the fear of it “all going wrong”! It’s a smart approach that could work well for others using the video signing functionality referred to below.

Digital Signing for Property Lawyers

More recently, in New Zealand, there has been a relaxation of the restrictions on the use of digital signing for property transactions and A&I forms (Authority and Identity Requirements for E-Dealing Guideline 2024), and I understand lawyers are interested in using it, but not sure how to do so.

I’m going to be participating in a NZLS webinar on 26 March (11am to 12pm) with Kristine King (Property Law Section Deputy Chair) and Robert Metcalf (Deputy Registrar-General of Land - Toitū Te Whenua LINZ).

We’ll be going through a real-life digital signing scenario in a property transaction and how to ensure compliance with LINZ’s identity verification requirements and the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017.

The learning aims will cover:

• understanding how digital signing works in a property transaction
• learning what is compliant when signing digitally, and what’s not
• gaining an awareness of different digital signing products (including DocuSign, AdobeSign and Secured Signing)
• learning how to tag documents to make signing easier for clients
• learning how to help clients prepare for and navigate the “digital signing” meeting, disclosure versus the signing process.

You may want to attend if you are:

• a property lawyer
• a registered legal executive or property support staff
• a managing partner, practice manager, or other decision-maker considering whether to make an investment in digital signing technology.

You can register here: https://bookwhen.com/propertylawsection/e/ev-szku-20250326110000