Whether you’re a lawyer that needs to have legal documentation served, or you are a private individual looking to sue somebody directly as your own attorney, you have to understand that serving legal docs is not like serving any kind product. It’s definitely not like serving pizza to somebody. It’s not like delivering any kind of food item at all. Delivery food is welcomed. Legal paperwork that opens the way for possibly expensive and time-intensive lawsuits are not. Here are the reasons why you need to either be extra creative or hire the right process servers to get the job done properly.
People don’t want it
When you’re serving pizza, people want pizza. People like to be served pizza. But people don’t like being sued. People don’t like the legal paperwork that starts the lawsuit process going. The reason this is the case is most people are smart enough to know that once they get served with a legal complaint, the clock starts ticking on when they would answer the complaint. If they just completely sit on that complaint and don’t do anything about the lawsuit, they will get hit with a default judgment. The court would basically grant the plaintiff’s request for however much money that the plaintiff is asking for. The merits of the case aren’t even discussed. It is not uncommon for default judgments to reach into the dozens of millions-all because the other party didn’t bother to respond to the claims mentioned in the original complaint.
Many people respond to this legal reality in many different ways. Responsible people, of course, get lawyers to fight those charges and claims. Other people basically duck it. These are basically people that disappear and are quite evasive.
You need to be creative
When you’re serving a legal document, either directly or through a service, you need to be creative. You need to know that people will try to be sneaky. People will try disappear and jump around from location to location. In many cases, they would even instruct other people to say certain phrases so that legally speaking, you cannot leave the legal paperwork with them. You have to anticipate this and you have to come up with creative workarounds and solutions that would address a wide range of alternative circumstances and situations that would still result in your legal documents being served properly.
You need to time your move
If there is one key factor in making sure that legal documents are served properly and legally, it really all boils down to timing. Regardless of how sneaky, creative or evasive a particular person is, there will always be a vulnerable time where that person is basically has his or her guard down. This is precisely the kind of time you need to move in and serve that person with your legal paperwork. Different process servers address this differently. The ones that are competent and experienced really know how to time their move properly for maximum legal effect. It really all boils down to reading certain signals correctly and this, of course, only comes from experience.
