Getting a client mandate signed electronically
How a law practice prepares a mandate for e-signature, links it to the client, sets the signing order and files the signed PDF and certificate.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Legal businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A client who phones on Monday and says "go ahead" has not yet given you a mandate. Until the mandate and fee agreement come back signed, the practice is working on goodwill, and every hour spent on the matter is an hour that may be hard to bill.
The paper route makes this slower than it needs to be. The client prints the document at work, signs it, looks for a scanner, and sends back a phone photograph with one page missing. Electronic signing takes the printer out of that chain. It does not take away the decisions about what you send, who signs it, in what order, and where the signed copy ends up. This article walks through those decisions for a law practice in South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya.
Where a paper mandate loses its days
Most delays with mandates have little to do with the client's willingness. They come from friction. The client is travelling. The attachment cannot be filled in on a phone. A company client needs a second director who is hard to pin down. The returned scan is unreadable. Each round trip is another e-mail and another day in which you may be working without a signed fee agreement.
A signing link fixes the mechanics: the client opens the document, signs where the fields are, and the result is collected for you. Your job moves to preparing the document properly before it goes.
Three starting points for the document
Achekam will send a mandate for signature in any of three forms:
- An uploaded PDF. If your mandate and fee agreement already exist as a settled document, upload the final PDF and send it as it is.
- A document composed from text blocks with merge fields. Useful when the mandate is mostly standard but the client's name, the matter description and the fee basis change each time. The merge fields fill in the details so nobody retypes them.
- A saved template. Once a partner has approved the practice's mandate, save it as a template so every fee earner starts from the same approved text.
Documents composed for signature carry the logo, brand colour and company details set under Settings, so the client receives something that looks like it came from your practice.
Signature fields, initials and the signing order
Place a signature field wherever someone must sign and an initials field wherever pages must be initialled. Then decide how the signers take their turn:
- In order suits a company client whose two directors must both sign, or a mandate the client signs first and the responsible attorney or advocate countersigns afterwards.
- All at once suits signers who are independent of each other, where the order makes no difference.
Set an expiry so a mandate does not sit open indefinitely, and switch on reminders so the client is nudged without anyone in the office having to remember. Each signer opens the document from a link sent by e-mail and does not need an Achekam account.
One practical point for new staff: the signing console has no sidebar entry. It opens from the Sign button and from the dashboard.
The client must be on record before the envelope goes
An envelope with a signer from outside the business has to be linked to a client or to a CRM lead before Achekam will send it. For a law practice that is a sensible discipline. You cannot send a mandate to someone who exists nowhere in your records, and the signed document is tied to the person it concerns.
So create the client record first, or make sure the enquiry exists as a lead, and only then prepare the envelope. If the person signing for a company is not the client itself, record them against that client so the link holds.
What comes back to the file
When everyone has signed, Achekam produces the signed PDF together with a completion certificate. The certificate lists each signer's e-mail address, the times, the IP address and browser used, and the document's fingerprint. Both are filed in the client's Signed documents folder, inside the same document store as the rest of the client's papers, so nobody has to save an attachment from an inbox.
Be clear about what kind of signature this is. Achekam's e-signatures are simple electronic signatures: the certificate cites section 13 of South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act and says they are not advanced electronic signatures. Whether a particular document may be signed this way is the practice's call, not the software's. Section 13 of the Act itself sets out when an electronic signature is valid and when the law requires an advanced electronic signature.
For practices in Nigeria and Kenya there is a further point. The certificate describes the signatures under the South African Act whatever the workspace's country. Take your own view, or your professional body's guidance, on how electronic signatures are treated where you practise before you rely on the certificate in a dispute.
Before pressing send
- The mandate wording has been approved by a partner, and you are sending the approved version.
- The client record or lead exists and the envelope is linked to it.
- Every signer is listed with the right e-mail address, and the order matches who must sign first.
- Signature and initials fields sit on every line and page that needs them.
- An expiry is set and reminders are on.
- The document is one that may be signed electronically under the law that governs it; anything that must be signed in ink goes on paper.
- Someone owns the follow-up if the client has not signed by the expiry.
Once the signed copy is on file, the next questions are how the rest of the matter is organised and what happens when fees go unpaid. See organising matter files and versions in one store and, for the outcome nobody plans for, writing off legal fees a client will never pay.
Start small: take the mandate you use today, have a partner approve it as a template, and send the next new client a signing link instead of an attachment.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
