Currently many contracts and other legal documents are emailed as PDFs that must be printed, signed, scanned and returned. Digital signatures save time and money, both for printing and shipping documents back and forth. Having experienced this many times, it’s time consuming and frustrating when a digital signature would work and is legal in the US as well as the EU (somewhat depending on jurisdictions).

Recently working with an attorney, I digitally signed documents. At one point she asked that I “wet sign” a PDF document noting that the court “may not” accept my digital signature. Grumbling to myself, I printed, signed, scanned and returned the document by email. I also digitally signed a copy of it and noted how my digital signature and “wet signature” looked exactly the same. From that point on she accepted my digital signature with one exception, on a document that had to be notarized.

For a basic summary on digital signatures with links to legal and other references see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_signature. From this article: “In many countries, including the United States, the European Union and Australia, electronic signatures (when recognized under the law of each jurisdiction) have the same legal consequences as the more traditional forms of executing of documents.”

Creating digital signatures is easy to do with any version of Acrobat, including the free Adobe Reader. This tutorial uses Reader to create a digital signature.

Under the Document menu in Reader or the Advanced menu in Acrobat, select Security Settings.
Select Digital IDs and click Add ID. Select “A new digital ID I want to create now.”

Select either a New PDCS#12 or a Windows Certificate Store ID. Both essentially work the same way. Click Next.
Create a password for the digital ID. The password will be used every time you sign a document. Click Finish.

At the point you have created a digital ID. The default digital signature uses standard text (Arial). It’s valid, but the perception may be that it isn’t, and may cause acceptance problems. Take it a step further, and use your signature as the ID, it will be accepted more widely if it looks like your “wet signature.”
Go to Edit> Preferences.

You need a PDF file with your signature in it. Sign a piece of paper, scan it (many current scanners create PDFs as their default format). Use a full version of Acrobat to convert a JPG or TIFF to a PDF. If you have Photoshop, save the scan as Photoshop PDF. If you have no other way, you can turn a scan of your signature into a PDF at
Acrobat.com. Go to
http://www.adobe.com/acom/createpdf/ sign up for Acrobat.com (it’s free) and use it to create a PDF from the scanned signature.

Note: The example signature used here is a font called JoeHand from 1001 Fonts www.1001fonts.com/font_details.html?font_id=190

In Preferences, select Security, click New.  There are three “Configure Signature Appearances”:
No Graphic
Imported Graphic
Name

As noted, for wider acceptance of your digital signature, select Imported Graphic. Click Browse and select the PDF scan of your signature. In the Configure Text area, you can turn off what you do not want to show with your signature. Click OK in the Select Picture dialog and OK in the Configure Signature Appearance dialog, your digital signature is ready to use.

To use a digital signature in the free Reader, the PDF must be enabled for Reader in a full version of Acrobat. Extend features in Adobe Reader is under the Advanced menu.

The results, a digitally signed PDF document.

Click here to download PDF tutorial.