On 21 August, the Law Society Gazette reported that preliminary results of a study by the Law Commission had concluded that no change in the law is necessary for electronic signatures to meet a statutory requirement for a signature on a document. The Gazette says that nearly 2 decades after the Electronic Communications Act 2000 created a statutory basis for electronic signatures and 2 years after the Law Society and City of London Law Society issued a practice note about using them to execute commercial contracts, uncertainty still abounds about the legal status of digitally signed documents.
The Law Commission study is available at –
https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/electronic-execution-of-documents/
