Ideas on providing solution to sign forms

Question

Good morning
I am trying to work out the best way to provide a solution to a client. There will be a pool of three convertible ultra books which clients will take on site to meetings. I am envisaging using adobe acrobat to create forms. The forms will contain fields to enter text. The form also needs to be signed by both parties, the owner of the form and their client.
I see that it is possible to sign a document and then place that signature on a form. While this would work if only the former owner was signing the document this looks like a clunky method when two different parties are required to sign the same form. It would appear if I were to use that method I would need to choose the option to sign a signature, sign as the form owner, place that signature on the form and then clear the signature and then ask the client to then sign and then place that signature on the form. I am really looking for a streamlined way of just allowing both the former owner and client with a single click/tool to sign their signatures.
The other problem I have is because the three ultra books will be shared with a pool of staff each user will not have a separate login. There will just be three logins one for each ultra book. This raises security concerns that Adobe Acrobat if we did use the sign/signature option the previous staff members signature will be stored and available to sign a document by the next user who has the ultra book.
I welcome recommendations on how to provide a solution using Acrobat. I have seen the freedraw tool. Would this be a suitable alternative to actually using the sign tool functionality? It certainly appears the simpler in the sense you just click the tool and both parties can quickly sign the form. Is there a difference, with regard to how official/legal a digital signature is if it is created using the free draw tool or the official sign within Acrobat?
Thank you very much for your assistance

Answer 1

You can have several signatures on the same form, with the last one 'locking' everything - so that's not a problem. If the form is a legal document it's the signatures themselves which are the issue.
You cannot use digital signatures if one of the parties is a random client, as they won't have their own ID. Anyone can create a self-signed ID but they're legally invalid, so they would have to buy a commercial one. That can take several days to arrive and costs a lot of money as the issuer must verify the customer's identity beyond question (they'll ask for  passports, etc.).
Digital IDs  need unlocking each time they're used (e.g. a password or a cipher dongle) - so sharing the computer between several workers isn't that much of a risk, though it's considered very bad practice to allow anyone else access to a private key file that uses password encryption as they could brute-force it given enough time. Normally you carry your IDs on a USB drive.
The 'ink' signatures where you just draw with your mouse/stylus are not legally-binding either, as the fidelity of the image is too low - anyone could scrawl a copy of your signature and even you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
If the form isn't important you could allow the client to 'ink' sign the file, then your form-owner applies a digital ID signature in a second field, locking the entire form, but it still doesn't make the first signature legal as there's no verifiable witness. Adobe's solution to allow a random person or list of people to sign something is to post the form to EchoSign, where Adobe acts as the witness, but that's an online process - it happens through email and couldn't be done in a meeting with a shared computer.