You know the routine. The contract arrives as an attachment. Someone prints it, signs the last page, walks to the scanner, and emails the PDF back. Sometimes there is no scanner and it is a photo taken on a phone, slightly crooked, the flash washing out half a clause.
Everyone treats the result as a signed contract. It usually is honoured, because most agreements are honoured. But if it is ever contested, that file will not do the work you think it does.
What you actually have
A scanned signature is an image of a handwriting sample, placed in a document. That is the whole thing. It carries no information about who put it there, when, or whether the document underneath is the one that was signed.
Consider what someone would have to do to forge it. Open the PDF, select the signature image, copy it, paste it into a different document. That is not a sophisticated attack. It is an afternoon with free software, and the result is indistinguishable from the original, because there is nothing to distinguish.
Now consider what you would have to do to prove it was not forged. You would have to argue from context: the email it came from, the conversation around it, the behaviour of the parties afterwards. Sometimes that is enough. It is a much weaker position than having the answer in the file.
The four gaps, named
No identity. The image shows a name written in a particular style. It does not show who wrote it, and a signature style is not a secret — it is on every cheque and every form that person has ever filled in.
No integrity. This is the serious one. Nothing binds the signature to the pages it sits on. Swap page 3 for a different page 3, keep the signed last page, and the file looks untouched. On a multi-page contract, the last page is often the only one anyone signs.
No timestamp. The PDF has a file date, which is a property of the file, not of the act of signing. It changes when the file is copied, re-saved, or moved between systems.
No record. There is nothing describing what happened. No log of who opened it, from where, on what device, in what order. If two people signed, there is no evidence which came first.
Why it survives here
It is worth saying plainly that the scan-and-email habit is not laziness. It grew because it was the only thing that worked. Printing is cheap, scanners are shared but available, email reaches everyone, and it needs no supplier, no subscription and no training.
The cost is real but invisible: three days of round trip for a document that could close in an hour, a filing cabinet nobody can search, and evidence that evaporates under pressure. Nobody feels those costs until the day they matter, and by then the file is what it is.
What an electronic signature adds
The same four gaps, closed.
Identity is established before the signature exists. At minimum, the signer received a link at a specific address. Commonly, they also typed back a one-time code sent to their own phone. Where the document warrants it, they uploaded an identity document that is attached to the record.
Integrity is cryptographic. When signing completes, the document is sealed. Change one character afterwards — one digit in an amount, one word in a clause — and the seal breaks visibly. The document is still readable by anyone; it is simply no longer alterable in silence.
Time is recorded per event. Each signature carries its own timestamp, so a contract signed by three people has three timed events, in order, rather than one ambiguous file date.
The record travels inside the file. A certificate page attached to the sealed PDF lists every signer, the method used to verify each of them, every timestamp, and a fingerprint of the document. You do not have to reconstruct the story from your inbox. It is in the document.
Side by side
| Scanned signature | Electronic signature | |
|---|---|---|
| Who signed | Unknown | Established and recorded |
| Document unchanged since | Cannot be shown | Cryptographically sealed |
| When | File date only | Timestamped per signature |
| Trail | Your email thread | Certificate page in the file |
| Copy-paste to another document | Trivial | Breaks the seal |
| Cost to produce | Printer, scanner, three days | A link and a few minutes |
Where the law sits
Guinean law recognises electronic writing and signature as evidence where the signer can be identified and the document’s integrity is guaranteed. Those are the two conditions, and they are precisely the two a scan fails. A scanned image identifies nobody and guarantees nothing.
This is not the same as saying a scanned contract is void. Parties can be bound by all sorts of conduct, and a scan may be perfectly good evidence alongside everything else. The point is narrower and more useful: a scan makes you argue for your document, and a sealed one lets the document argue for itself.
General information, not legal advice. A specific document in a specific dispute is a question for a lawyer.
The one change worth making
You do not have to convert everything at once. Pick the documents where losing the argument would actually hurt — supplier contracts, client agreements, anything with an amount in it — and move those first.
Leave the internal leave requests on paper for now if you like. They were never the risk.
The e-signature product page shows what lands inside a sealed document, and pricing is quoted in Guinean francs.