Esign Capabilities

How do I get set up for E-Sign?

First, it depends on what you mean by E-Sign. If you mean providing a laptop or tablet to the signer so the signer can sign documents that don’t need to be notarized, there’s a good chance you already have the hardware you need. Do you have a Windows 10 laptop and a spartphone that can act as a hotspot? For most esigning services, you’re all set. A few have tried to get people use an electronic pen and a special pad, but those have been resisted, and I don’t hear much about those anymore.

There are various providers like DocuSign, Pavaso, and Docverify, but the title company or signing service most likely would quickly get you set up for free, so no reason for you to subscribe to any of these.

If you mean the signer would esign a document that needs to be notarized, and then you would enotarize it, it depends on the laws and rules in your state. So far there has been very little of this going on for real estate signings, so I would suggest you wait and see what develops.

If you are interested in doing enotarizations for people who use a camera and microphone to communicate with you via the internet, instead of appearing in person, these seem to be mostly for general notary work. You would first have to find out if this is allowed in your state. If it is, you could check out the website of one of the companies in this business and see if they are looking for notaries in your state.

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Great response, Ashton, and very true!

I would add that a good way to start would be to sign up with Amrock (who has a very good hybrid signing/esigning training program) and indicate in your profile that you wish to do esignings. Assuming, of course, that you are in a state that allows electronic notarization. Verify your state requirements - my state requires an special endorsement on my license and certification as an E-Notary by a “recognized nationwide electronic document signing company”. Keep asking the Amrock folks for training. Eventually - and be patient; this is a low priority for them - they will hook you up with their training modules.

Ashton, where would I look on my laptop to know if I have what I need?

All the systems that seem to be successful, whether for just esigning, or enotarization, are based on logging into a website. Unless your laptop is an antique, you can log into websites, so you shouldn’t have any problem with the hardware. It’s just a matter of being assigned a username and password to access whatever platform has been picked for a certain assignment, and that’s probably going to be decided by the lender or title company.

Starting back in 1988 (!) computer folks started developing electronic signatures based on digital certificates. It looked like that was going to be the way electronic signatures got done, and some of the enotarization rules in some of the states actually require enotaries to get a digital certificate and sign something with it in order to register as an enotary. But mostly this has been pushed into the background. With most of the platforms, the platform provider actually “does the math”, so a digital certificate gets used behind the scenes, but the notary won’t notice unless they know what to look for.

If you want a history lesson you could read the Wikipedia article.

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Esign is a very important part of our technology world. I have been using windows 10 operating systems and work on esign but did not know so much about esign capabilities. Recently I faced Dell bios problem and could not be update dell bios and during the esign would be facing that bios problem. I tried many possible processes but could not be updated bios.