Legal
November 12, 2019

Are your emails legally binding?

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Acquisition
We send hundreds if not thousands of emails every year. And, although some of those emails may be personal, fun, or informative. Many of them can possibly contain important discussions with details of deals or contracts. With a recent case making waves in Texas, the question is now being asked: are the emails we send legally binding contracts?

Recent cases  

In 2011, the decision in the Naldi v. Grunberg ruled that emails are similar if not the same as ink-on-paper contracts.

A 5-judge panel in the state of New York decided that commercial real estate transactions made via email can be proof of a deal and expands to the state’s Statute of Frauds.

In October 8, 2019, the Bujnoch, Life Estate, et al. V. Copano Energy, LLC, et al. case made it to the Texas Supreme Court. In this case, an exchange of emails between two parties occurred with agreed-upon offers. Copano ultimately refused to honor the terms set forth and Bujnoch Life Estate sued them for breach of contract.

The Texas Supreme Court found that the emails consisted of all the essential elements of a legally binding contract: the terms of the parties’ agreement, the identity of the parties involved, and a description of the property being sold.  

What is the final verdict?

Emails can, in fact, be legally binding and satisfy the statute of frauds.

Under the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (applied to all interstate and foreign transactions) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) (used by California and adopted by many other states), a contract and a signature won’t be denied legal effect solely on the grounds that they are in electronic form.

How to prevent your emails from becoming legally binding  

Luckily for you, there are precautions you can take to limit liability and protect yourself.

The first is to be careful with what you say in your emails. For example, if an offer, acceptance of the offer, consideration with talks of payment, and agreement of intention to legally bind the contract is mentioned, then you have a recipe for a legally binding contract.

Adding an automated disclaimer to all your emails is highly recommended.  

What is a disclaimer?

A disclaimer is a note or warning added to an outgoing email that is separate from the main message.

Outlook email signature disclaimer

The disclaimer should clearly state your intentions with phrases such as:  

  • “For discussion purposes only and cannot be used to create a binding contract.”
  • “This email is nonbinding unless and until a more formal and definitive written contract between the parties is signed.”

You can use Letsignit to add disclaimers to every email automatically. Try it for free to secure your emails.

About the author
Amandine is the Head of Acquisition at Letsignit! Initially a content specialist, she now actively contributes to the profitability of acquisition channels: SEO, SEA, SMA, SMO... Amandine is also one of the pillars of Marketing at Letsignit! For more than 5 years, she has been participating in and initiating marketing projects and campaigns that systematically reflect her vision, writing style, and creativity (which can also be seen in all of her colorful outfits that brighten up the day of everyone she meets).
About Letsignit
With Letsignit email signature manager, connect with your audience in a way that's on-brand and personal, while driving quality lead generation.
Frequently
asked questions
1
Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2
Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3
Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4
Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5
What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6
Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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asked questions
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