When we think of serving documents, we think of the act of delivering papers to someone. And although this is essentially what service of process is, we tend to neglect what goes on behind the scenes.
The players include attorneys, paralegals, process servers, and staff of the process serving companies, and they all have respective roles that are equally necessary. Without attorneys, there would be no papers to serve. Without paralegals, work would not be distributed to process servers and communication between attorneys and process serving companies would be virtually nonexistent. Without process servers, there would be no one to serve documents. Without office staff of process serving companies, there would be no one to properly route documents to their rightful servers, there would be no one to generate affidavits of service, there would be no one to generate invoices, there would be no one to communicate between client and server, and there would be no one to micromanage each service to ensure clients are kept abreast of what’s going on.
As you can see, the office staff plays multiple roles, and the ones I listed are only a few. In our office, we have a manager, an assistant manager, a send-away clerk, two data entry clerks, a billing clerk, and an accountant. Each position comes with its own duties and challenges, but it’s important to recognize that every person plays an essential part in the day-to-day functions that make up our business. Without even one of these positions, we would fall short of a consistent flow. ♦
Transcript:
A staff.
I don’t know how many process servers you’ve had dealings with, whether they were large companies or small companies. Staff is usually a sticking point, where, “I’m not getting my returns on time, I don’t get any callbacks on what’s going on. You’ve had my paper for three days and I haven’t heard anything.” These kinds of things are developed in your staff, the staff of the process serving companies.
In our company, we have a staff of seven. And each person has a specific duty. We have one girl whose only job is to sit there and field the questions from the paralegals or the legal secretaries who call and want to know this or that. How much is this? What about that? Whatever question it is, that person is there. I call her my “fixer.” She fixes everything. She’ll talk to you. She’s the nicest person in the world. She’ll make you happy. You might be really upset because you just came out of your attorney’s office and your attorney’s screaming at you, wanting to know why things aren’t done.