Are Email and Fax Contracts Legally Binding?

At one time, a contract wasn't legally binding unless everyone involved sat down, went over the agreement together, then signed and dated it with witnesses. Aside from the negligible "handshake agreement", this was the norm, but times are a-changin'. Because of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act of 1999, and various legislature passed since then, contracts are no longer limited to pristine original copies on clean, white paper.

In fact, according to the UETA, email and fax contracts are now legally binding. This means that any agreement you make through any medium - electronic or otherwise - will hold up in court. Many cases have been brought before civil courts, and the appeals process on these trials are lengthy and complicated, but the law will almost always side with a contract that has been entered into via any medium.

So what does this mean for the average American citizen?

Think about the sheer volume of electronic communication you send on a daily basis. Your mother might have told you to avoid putting anything in writing that you don't want to come back and haunt you later, and this advice now extends to email and fax communications. Since these types of agreements are legally binding, you have to watch what you say when sending correspondence via email and fax on a daily basis.

For example, let's say that you are negotiating a freelance writing contract with a client. You've gone back and forth through email for several days about price, deadlines and other minutiae, and finally you say, "Okay, your terms are agreeable." Later, you decide that you agreed based on exhaustion and frustration, and not because the terms were at all beneficial for you. Is it possible to go back on your word, or is the email contract legally binding?