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Email Contracts
When most people think of contracts, they think of agreements between parties committed to writing, and assume that a contract is not valid unless it is on paper, and signed.
However, the vast majority of contracts are not written, and do not need to be in order for a court to enforce them. A contract is simply an agreement between 2 or more parties to do something (or refrain from doing something) in exchange for valuable consideration. At the most basic level, an enforceable contract exists if there is an offer by one party, acceptance by the other party, and some exchange of value between them.
With this in mind, there is no reason why a contract entered into through email should not be enforceable. The only issues that might come up involves the authenticity of the emails between the parties. If one party wants out of a contract, they can plausibly claim that someone else accessed their email account, and entered the contract for them. However, other evidence should be able to resolve most of these issues fairly easily.
Note that a very small subset of contracts must be committed to writing in order to be enforced. These include contracts for the sale of real estate, contracts which, by their terms, cannot be performed in 1 year or less, contracts to assume the debt of another person, and contracts for the sale of goods priced at $500 or more. There may be some issue as to whether or not emails satisfy the writing requirement.
For most purposes, however, a contract that is entered into through email will be enforced by a court.
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