App Store – Are Legal Contract Apps Allowed?

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I'm considering involving a lawyer in creating a simple app to create a contract between two people. They read and sign the contract on an iPhone and both get copies of it.

I know there are medical apps like WebMD that provide medical info, while disclaiming intent to diagnose, cute or treat conditions. Can the same approach be applied to an app that creates contract while disclaiming offering legal advise?

I'm interested if the kind of app I'm proposing would be allowed on the App Store?

Best Answer

Apple has made it abundantly clear that they will reject apps for reasons that change over time.

  1. The review guidelines explicitly say - your app will be rejected if it's too similar to many other apps. So - the first person to do this might breeze through review. The 10th or 50th, not so much.
  2. The review guidelines and nature of thousands of apps means that not all reviews are equivalent - what one app does to get through might be rejected for weeks or months as you work with Apple to meet the review you get. Different teams and different people will make different decisions no matter how well intentioned a company is to make reviews uniform and fair to all.
  3. iOS apps of the category of remote notarization are now live (several versions of that app exist), many real estate and digital signature verification / electronic contracting services exist (this is far more crowded a slot than notary) and all manner of business apps are booming on the app store as the premium and pay to play gaming juggernaut gets so saturated that apps with real functionality will hopefully become more prevalent.

Thus, setting aside any notion that you can "read the tea leaves" based on what apps have been approved in the past, it's probably a "first mover" advantage and don't invest more than you can afford to lose until you have something you can submit and then work through your specific review feedback with Apple as opposed to guessing what may or may not be an issue.

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