Process Serving Tips for Attorneys and Paralegals
So few attorneys and paralegals are involved in the actual serving end of this process that the process server sees and gains experience in, so we thought it might be interesting and helpful to share some of it with you, and offer some tips that can lead to a more efficient and perfect serve. The following is not legal advice, only tips and suggestions from a process server’s perspective. Always consult an attorney for legal advice.
If there’s a deadline for service, either because of a firm court date or rules requirement, please be sure to include that in your cover letter.
Always include as much information with your serve as possible, especially age and DOB ( Date of Birth ) of the person being served. One recent example was that we were told to serve John Doe at a particular residential address, and it turned out that there were three of them living there, a John Doe Jr., his father, and John Doe Senior. If possible also include a good quality photo. We’ve had many instances where a defendant told us that they weren’t there, or didn’t even live there, and we were standing there talking to them. In a recent serve, I told the woman that I knew who she was, I had a photo of her, then she accepted service.
Please include a filled-out affidavit or proof of service with the cover letter of your serve, outside of the package that gets served. It should contain the proper form for your state, with all the case details filled in – everything but the actual service details, signature and notarization ( if required ) that the process server adds after the service is done.
When serving a company, if you can – your rules allow for it, it’s best to serve the company in general and not require service on only the Registered Agent. Very often Registered Agents are not present. Yes, many laws say that they’re supposed to be, but that’s not the reality that we face in the field. We’ve had Registered Agents who were out of town, sometimes for as long as three months. That can really hang up your serve.
Serving a subpoena for records on the “Records Custodian” of a company. In actual field work, we find that very few companies even have someone with a title of “Records Custodian”, yet most attorneys specify that service needs to be made on them. Again, if your rules allow for it, it’s best to simply serve the subpoena on the company in general.
Always try to leave plenty of time for the serve. For example, many small claims serves must be served at least 15 days before the court date. If you give us the serve 20 days before the court date, it may seem like plenty of time from your perspective, but we only have 5 days to get it served. If it’s at a residential address, the defendant may not even be home at the time of any given attempt. So it’s best to leave as much time as possible before the court date, for it to be served.
Pro Se cases: A pro se case ( for the self ) is where someone does their own legal work. We don’t recommend this because there are so many ways to botch your own legal work, but if someone absolutely can’t afford an attorney, there are times when they think they have no choice. But often 80% of the hassles that process servers experience, come from pro se clients. Some process servers are even declining pro se work nowdays, because of this, and some have raised their fees for pro se clients to try to discourage those clients from coming to them, and compensate for the extra time and hassles it can cause them. But if you’re in such a situation, here are a few tips to make things go more smoothly. Per above: Always try to leave plenty of time for the serve. Don’t give the process server your serve on one day and call them the next day and ask; “Is it served yet?” ( Unless you paid extra for “Same Day Rush Service” ) But it’s better just to ask the serve to give you a call when it’s served, or better yet, an email. Try not to send 10-20 emails over the course of the serve. The process server has limited time and they need to pay their bills too.
Fedexing you your Affidavit, Proof or Return Of Service overnight: We don’t keep Fedex forms here. Generally clients send us a PDF printable label with their account information filled out on it, then we can print it and just put it in an envelope and drop it in a Fedex box that gets picked up at 5 PM for next day or next morning delivery. Otherwise we have to go to a Fedex store and fill out a long form and stand in line. Your cooperation is appreciated with this.
Why we don’t take your credit card number over the phone or by email: Most people aren’t aware that phone lines and emails are generally considered “insecure” methods of communication, but they are. Phone lines can be tapped into without your even knowing it’s happening, and cordless or cell phones use the radio waves and can be intercepted. The internet was originally developed by DARPA – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as a way to try to prevent government communications from being disrupted in the event of a nuclear war. Think of it like a huge honeycomb or “web”, with connecting “nodes” where it passes through servers. ( computers that act as serving nodes on the internet, and pass data around ) Have you ever sent someone an email about a particular topic, then received spam about that very topic, the very next day? Did you think that was a weird coincidence? Your email may have passed through the node of a spammer on the internet, where their software read it and then sent you spam about something they thought you’d be interested in buying. For this reason, companies with extremely sensitive information often use encrypted phones to communicate with their other offices, and encrypted email systems to send emails that they absolutely don’t want anyone else to read, as do secret government organizations. We value your security here, so we only accept payments by mailed checks or through the secure encrypted payment system at our web site, which opens an encrypted data stream between your computer and the payment site. That way we never keep your credit card information here at our office either, and no one but the encrypted payment system ever sees it.
We’re only human, after all, just like you. If you requested something unusual or special, please remind us once in awhile. Best not to wait several weeks until there’s a problem.
We love happy clients and our interest lies in you being one of them! Thank you!
