Does an Electronic Signature Need a Witness or Notary?

This page quotes what the statutes actually say, with a link to each source, so you can check any statement yourself. It explains the law in general terms — it is not legal advice, and it can’t tell you what your particular document requires. For that, ask a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

Three different things people conflate

Before anything else, these are not the same:

Witnessing — a third party watches you sign and then signs themselves, attesting that they saw it. No special credential is needed; a witness is usually just a disinterested adult.

Notarisation — a commissioned notary public verifies your identity, confirms you are signing willingly, and applies their own seal and signature. A notary is a public officer holding a state commission.

Remote online notarisation (RON) — notarisation performed over live audio-video rather than in the same room. It is a method of notarising, not a separate legal act.

They are frequently discussed as though they were interchangeable. They are not, they are required in different circumstances, and most everyday agreements need none of them.

Most documents require neither

This is the answer for the majority of readers. Ordinary commercial and consumer agreements — service contracts, NDAs, statements of work, employment offers, sales agreements, leases in many states — are enforceable on the signatures of the parties alone.

Neither the ESIGN Act nor UETA imposes a witnessing or notarisation requirement. They are enabling statutes: their function is to stop an electronic record being denied effect because it is electronic. Where such a requirement exists, it comes from somewhere else — a specific statute governing that document type, a state’s formalities for a particular instrument, or a term in the contract itself.

So the practical question is never “does an e-signature need a notary?” It is “does this document need a notary, whether signed on paper or on screen?” If the answer on paper is no, going electronic does not create the requirement.

Where notarisation is required, ESIGN addresses it directly

If a law does require notarisation, the federal statute anticipates electronic execution. 15 U.S.C. § 7001(g) provides:

“If a statute, regulation, or other rule of law requires a signature or record relating to a transaction in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce to be notarized, acknowledged, verified, or made under oath, that requirement is satisfied if the electronic signature of the person authorized to perform those acts, together with all other information required to be included by other applicable statute, regulation, or rule of law, is attached to or logically associated with the signature or record.”

Two things follow.

First, a notarisation requirement is not a barrier to electronic signing at federal level. The statute expressly contemplates the notary signing electronically.

Second — and this is the part that trips people up — § 7001(g) says the requirement can be satisfied electronically. It does not authorise any particular notary to act, nor say how they must verify identity, nor permit them to do it remotely. Who may notarise, and by what procedure, is state law. Notaries are commissioned by states and bound by their commissioning state’s rules.

Remote online notarisation is state-by-state

RON — where the notary and signer are in different places, connected by live audio-video — has been adopted broadly across the United States, but the authority, the technology standards, the identity-proofing requirements and the journal and recording obligations are all set at state level and differ between them.

Because that landscape has changed rapidly and continues to, we have deliberately not published a count of states here: any number would be out of date before long, and a stale figure on a legal page is worse than none. Check your state’s Secretary of State (or equivalent commissioning authority) for the current position, which is the authoritative source for that state in any case.

Two practical points that hold generally:

• A notary is normally bound by the rules of the state that commissioned them, and there are usually requirements about where the notary must be physically located during the act. Where the signer is located is treated differently by different states.
• RON almost always carries specific identity-proofing steps — typically knowledge-based authentication and credential analysis — plus an obligation to record and retain the session. These are meaningfully stricter than ordinary e-signing.

If your document needs notarisation, you generally need a notary using a platform built for notarial acts. General-purpose e-signature software, including Signatura, is not a notarisation service and does not make anyone a notary.

Witnessing requirements come from the document, not the signature

There is no general federal rule that an electronic signature must be witnessed. Where witnessing is required it comes from the law governing that instrument, and those requirements often predate electronic signing by a long way — which is why they can be awkward to satisfy on screen.

Wills are the clearest example. They are also excluded from ESIGN altogether: 15 U.S.C. § 7003(a)(1) carves out “a will, codicil, or testamentary trust,” so ESIGN’s enabling rule simply does not reach them. Whether a will can be electronically signed and witnessed at all depends entirely on state law, and states differ sharply — we map that landscape, the Uniform Electronic Wills Act and where it’s been enacted, in can you sign a will electronically?

Other categories where witnessing or additional formalities commonly arise include certain real-property instruments, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and some family-law documents. These vary by state and by document, and it is exactly the kind of question worth ten minutes with a lawyer rather than a guess.

We cover the full ESIGN exclusion list in Are electronic signatures legally binding?.

What to do in practice

Start with the document, not the technology. Ask what formalities this instrument requires on paper. That answer almost always carries over.

If the answer is “none” — which it is for most business agreements — a plain electronic signature is sufficient, and what matters next is evidence: identity, timestamps, and a record that shows the document has not changed since signing.

If notarisation is required, use a notary. Federal law lets them act electronically; state law governs how.

If witnessing is required, check whether your state permits it electronically for that specific document type before assuming it does.

Outside the United States

Formalities differ significantly by country and often by document. The UK, for instance, has particular rules on witnessing deeds. Canada’s framework is set out in Are e-signatures legal in Canada?, and the EU’s tiered system in eIDAS explained: SES vs AdES vs QES.

Where a document must be witnessed or notarised, that requirement is a matter of national or provincial law, not of electronic-signature law.