Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Technology Blogs -> Acrobat for Legal Professionals

Law Technology

: Acrobat for Legal Professionals

Signing PDFs using the Topaz Digital Signature Pad

By Rick Borstein

There certainly is a lot of pressure to be "green" these days. Reducing paper is a rally cry at big law firms and many smaller firms are thinking about it, too.

While it seems pretty easy to send PDFs instead of printing documents, are there times when we must print? For example, to sign a document?

If you are a regular reader of this column, you might remember my article about creating signature stamps. In that piece, I explained how to use Acrobat to "stamp" your personal signature on documents. This is a good practice to use anywhere fax signatures are accepted.

What about gathering the signatures of clients and partners?

A client comes and is ready sign your standard intake agreement and retainer. How could you accomplish that without printing anything? Could you digitally capture a signature and protect yourself at the same time?

Short answer: Yes, but you need a digital signature pad, like the Topaz SignatureGem (available from resellers such as Computime) which is the subject of this article.

You've probably used a digital signature pad when checking out at a department store. Signatures collected from a digital signature pad are superior in many ways to paper signatures. Not only does the pad capture the signature itself, it also captures how the signature was made by tracking variables such as pressure and pen angle. That offers additional assurance.

For those who want to peak ahead, I recorded a Topaz Signing Pad Demo Movie.

More info, after the break . . .

Full post as published by Acrobat for Legal Professionals on July 07, 2009 (boomark / email).