Paperless transactions: getting there but not quite yet

Here is an interesting discussion on The Bloodhound Blog on paperless transactions to which I made a recent contribution. Thanks to Jeff Brown for pointing it out.

I've been reading about this paperless phenomenon for years. We're still not 100% there in my opinion, and that's okay with me. Call me old fashioned, but I like having the final documents in some tangible form in addition to the PDF copy I usually consult for ease of reference. Thankfully, however, the mountains of due diligence materials I have to review on a deal are all scanned and put into eletronic form, thus making them easier to send around the world. (And we're also saving trees, although some documents just still have to be printed to read carefully. I find that a BIG monitor for the PC helps in this regard.) In most cases, there is just no substitute for a piece of paper with ink on it. And if you want to exchange documents electronically without originals, I like to make sure that you can demand an original if you want it.