Director of Legal @ Malbek - CLM for Enterprise | Legal Tech Author and Speaker | Fastcase 50 2022 Honoree | Legal Tech Startup Advisor and Investor | Mental Health Advocate
When it comes to the legal tech community, I try to support, encourage, and inspire as much as I can. However, there is one thing I cannot and will never support. I will not apologize for this view and to those who may disagree, I hope that we can still be friendly. What is this thing, you ask? Wet signatures. Just. Don't. Do. It. Just don't. Otherwise Dark Colin might show up. I'm Colin, Director of Legal and Evangelist at Malbek - CLM for Enterprise. I am your guide to the world of legal tech. Please follow me and subscribe to my LinkedIn Newsletter! #legaltech #innovation #law #business #learning
Not that I want to trigger you, but... I was in that camp, too, until I started exploring why anyone was still using wet signatures. I found two valid reasons. First was anything that might have to be filed with local governments. They may still require a wet signature. I think the example was that X county in X state rejects filings unless it is a wet signature. The other is if you have a non-US counterparty in a country that has not implemented signature laws with put esignatures on par with wet signatures. You may be at a disadvantage if you have to sue on a contract in that country. I haven't followed the current law, but for a long time, parties in some Asian countries needed to apply the company chop to the signature page to make it enforceable. I expect that they have electronic chops now but maybe not everywhere.
Honestly it's contracts negotiators who show up to the table not knowing their own product. If I'm buying something from you, and I've redlined your agreement that means I've spoken to my product and engineering teams on how we plan to deploy it. I have their understanding and my own questions and concerns in mind. So if I'm explaining to you how your product works and why we should revise the agreement in this way, I will go from 0 to annoyed very quickly. Knowing how your features work, and what happens with customer data is table stakes imho.
When the doc is fire I sign it with 🔥 🔥 🔥. When the doc is bussin’ I sign it with 🚌🚌🚌. When the doc is sus I sign it with someone else’s name. Wtf is a “wet signature?” Never heard of it.
Pet peeve is teams that won’t get on a call because they are ‘too busy’ but seem to have time for 15 back and forths on red lines when a 15min call to explain use case would clear up the issue immediately.
Hahahaha. This is so good. But, few power trips are more deliciously anachronistic and poetically inconvenient as a wet signature.
The Sovereign Citizen community would like a word with you... 🤣
How about moist signatures?
Agreed
#DarkColin 😂
Director of Legal @ Malbek - CLM for Enterprise | Legal Tech Author and Speaker | Fastcase 50 2022 Honoree | Legal Tech Startup Advisor and Investor | Mental Health Advocate
1moWhat are your legal pet peeves?