The Regular Tasks of Legal Process Servers

If you are planning on filing to open a court case, you, no doubt, have a lot of your mind. Amongst a lot else, one thing you will need to understand and take advantage of is the concept of a "process server." Legal process servers are needed in an assortment of tasks, including filing court papers, serving legal documents, and document retrieval. Their principal job is to deliver or "serve" legal documents to a defendant or person involved in a court case. Only when the process server’s job done are the documents legally binding. Process serve often have to wait outside of someone’s workplace or otherwise spend days trying to track them down in order to give them the paperwork. It is a very important job, and not an easy one!

When a private process server delivers official court documents telling a person to appear in court at a certain date and time, the documents are sometimes referred to as "process." There are several different types of documents that the process may include, which are:

Writs: A writ is essentially the name given to an order given, in writing, by a court. This is also sometimes simply known as a "court order."

Subpoenas: A subpoena is a type of court order which is used to let a person know that they are supposed to testify before a court or present something to the court, like a cell phone or note.

Summonses: A summons is the actual order given to appear in court.

Complaints: A complaint is a legal document that explains why a person is being sued, what the specific claim is, and any other important details of a case.

These four documents are far from all a process server does. In addition to serving these process papers, they can also serve a civil summons, civil complaint, forcible detainer action, eviction, garnishments, orders of protection, injunctions prohibiting harassment, petitions for supplemental proceedings, child support, divorce papers, and collection letters. In addition to serving someone with court papers, a process server can also file papers with a court for you and even provide document retrieval services.

If you are reading this and thinking "I bet many people don’t want the process server to find them!" than you are absolutely right. Because they sometimes need to track down people who do not want to be found, process servers have good investigative skills. They many times need to make use of stakeouts, surveillance, and skip tracing in order to serve their paperwork and make it legally binding. Skiptracing is a way to locate people who have "skipped town." Sometimes these people may be missing inadvertently but others are deliberately in hiding. Process servers engaging in skiptracing will use a variety of methods, from high tech computer software, to simple phone calls, to stakeouts, to even using social media in order to find a missing person and serve them.

If this sounds like a lot, you are right! Process servers are very important to our judicial system. Without them, people would be ruled against without ever knowing they were involved in a legal dispute or on the other end, many court cases would never be able to get started in the first place.