That depends on the locality and given the spate of e-signature legislation in the early 2000s, I would say that's no longer true for the majority of U.S. state

That depends on the locality and given the spate of e-signature legislation in the early 2000s, I would say that's no longer true for the majority of U.S. states. I can't speak for Canada. I can say on good authority, as I paid lawyers good money for the legislation ( http://tinyurl.com/3xwvf5a http://tinyurl.com/3xwvf5a ) and pertinent case-law research, that (commercially) emails with e-sigs in VA are just as good, in some cases, MUCH better than faxes due to the header meta-information. What constitutes an "e-sig" under the Commercial Code of Virginia can also be very simple (nothing more than a "/s/ <full name> <title> <date>" line in documents) provided that both parties agree apriori that "sufficient notice" can be given over email. Given the pace of business these days, to a first-order approximation, we simply won't do any kind of volume work with a client, vendor, or partner that doesn't support electronic document authorization. Faxes really are dinosaurs. We still maintain a dedicated fax line, but to my knowledge, it's not be utilized for over 4 years.