That's the real lesson as the banks correctly sign off on the Attorney General's settlement, the lesson being that although illegal, robo-signing documents was also somewhat inevitable given the massive presence of robo-mortgages, i.e. mortgages as full blown securities.
There are pluses and minuses to most things in life, and for all the screaming about "greedy banks" or "irresponsible borrowers" a little history goes a long way to understanding where this mess came from, and its' even in a movie: Its a Wonderful Life.
Now the Jimmy Stewart character is the exact opposite of a robo-signer or robo-mortgage lender, because his nice little bank knows everyone, which makes the ending so charming, except it wasn't really like that back in the day.
When one customer failed back in the day, if the bank was small enough, it could trigger a panic, just as one large mean ole Mr. Potter could do the same thing by pulling a line of credit to the bank; that's where securitization of mortgages came from, the desire to spread risk in order to minimize risk.
That strategy actually worked very well for a long time, as it created a national market for houses that had never existed before, even as it, like all strategies, bore within it the seeds of its own dilemmas, namely that a personal loan bond is not the same kettle of fish as a securitized loan, especially in the event that loans failed on a related basis.
The reason that related basis matters is that once you have an industrialized process of lending, robo-mortgages, once things started to go wrong, then you had the natural inverse emerge, of robo-signing being needed to industrialize the foreclosure process, since mortages were not any longer really loans, but pure commodities/tradeable securities, not the same animal as to transactions involved.
The good news for banks and consumers is that over time, a better balance will surely, and in fact is, being struck between the desire to get the risk sharing benefits of the "liquefaction" of mortages into security while maintaining enough of the risk mitigation features of an ordinary loan based on a long run relationship as opposed to a relationship between individuals and capital markets, Financial Intermediation 101.
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this is why the average american ranks politicians down with used car salesmen and trial lawyers - the endgame is the same for all 3 groups "how can i exploit this situation to make a fast buck?"
To be fair, it used to be that small banks had to carry out complicated risk management techniques that one could argue weren't well suited for them, and, they were vulnerable to local fluctuations in prices, say if Texas got whacked by low oil prices, leading to local unemployment, and then higher defaults, like with the S&Ls. Its an imperfect world, and so you correct that problem by full securitization, and, you get other problems, where, maybe there's a balance somewhere as to making people hold just enough risk on their balance sheet to care about what loans they are extending, and its not just banks, but the mortgage salespeople. If you give someone a $5,000 commission for "closing," with no built incentive to watch the default rate later... big surprise. Life insurance is similar mathematically, and was traditionally paid out as commissions to agents on a sliding scale based on renewals, and maybe the fee was too high, but, it did encourage agents to calculate who would actually keep the policies, good for everyone really, compared to the alternatives, and that's all economics often is, assessing alternatives.
I want my Robo signed check from a bank Con; you offering me one? :)