The wording of a contract in electronic form

Introduction: in the modern economy, registering the wording of a contract with the help of electronic documents has acquired the character of a stable trend. The aim of the study is to identify the main trends in the practice of exchanging electronic documents for the conclusion or execution of a civil contract. The paper uses the methods of description and interpretation; the theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic. Results: the main reasons why the agreement of the parties is put in the form of a written document are determined. The judicial practice positions concerning the recognition of a message exchange by e-mail, text messages in the messengers, as a form of the civil contract are studied. It is established that the agreement of the parties shall determine the possibility of exchanging electronic documents, and the addressee and sender of electronic messages shall be identified: if the message reliably comes from the party under the contract and is received by the other party, the content of this message binds the parties. In the study of the problem of binding the affiliate entity by the agreement concluded by purchasing or ordering services on the Internet, it is determined that in the vast majority of cases, consumers are not familiar with the terms of contracts that they conclude. And although the ignorance of the actual information about the contract does not entail, as a rule, the negative consequences for the buyer (customer), in the event of a conflict, the court may conclude that the consumer is not bound by the terms of the contract to which he acceded, due to the fact that he did not understand its meaning. Conclusions: an electronic document - a scanned copy of a paper document, a letter sent by e-mail, a document posted on the company’s website as an accession agreement - is a full-fledged document in which the will of the parties to the agreement can be expressed. The specifics of electronic forms require establishing the possibility to identify the person issuing the document confirming the fact of a conscious accession to the agreement, determining the precise content of the agreement.