4 Simple Steps to Increase Productivity for Legal Professionals
When it comes to productivity at work, the legal profession is at the forefront. The demands of your average law office require high-quality results delivered quickly and well, placing pressure on legal professionals to be as efficient as possible.
While your law firm might provide you with productivity tools, managing your own productivity is always a personal responsibility whether you’re a lawyer, a paralegal, or any other type of legal professional. If you’re looking for ways to increase your own productivity at work, you’re likely to benefit from the following four steps.
Step 1: Track The Time You Spend on Tasks
Before you can improve your productivity, you need a benchmark to measure yourself against. People can be relatively poor judges of elapsed time, so using a stopwatch app or similar time tracker on your laptop or mobile device will provide you a much clearer picture of just how long specific tasks take you. This lets you apply targeted pressure to the most time-consuming tasks, enabling you to pursue solutions to these tasks without wasting time on processes that already work for you.
Step 2: Find Ways to Streamline Processes Without Compromising on Quality
Using technological tools or developing specific approaches to certain tasks will certainly go a long way in streamlining processes that otherwise take up too much of your time. That being said, keep in mind that productivity is about more than completing work tasks as quickly as possible – it’s also about ensuring that work is done accurately and without error. In the field of law this is doubly important — a mistake on a crucial court document could cause needless delays or even cost you clients, so ensure that you’re not streamlining processes by sacrificing quality control.
Step 3: Work in Blocks of Uninterrupted Time – But Not For Too Long
We all work best when we’re not subject to distractions or interruptions. If you can, position yourself at the office (or wherever you’re working) in an environment where you’re sure you won’t be bothered for long, uninterrupted periods of time. However, working for too long without taking a break is actually counter-productive; both your mind and your body need to reset periodically, so ensure that you don’t work in blocks longer than an hour or an hour and a half. Make sure any breaks you take get your blood pumping – going for a short walk, or even just taking a flight of stairs, are both excellent options.
Step 4: Employ Environmental Adaptation Techniques, then Adapt to Your New Environment
It may seem trite, but environmental adaptation has a definite positive effect on your productivity. Take steps to personalize your work environment and you’ll increase your overall happiness at work; this will have the secondary effect of making you naturally more productive. If you’ve got your own office, decorate it to your own specifications, including objects like plants and other aesthetic elements. Even if you’re relegated to a cubicle farm, you can still decorate the walls and shelves with personal items.
How Law Firms Are Using Social Media Today
Law firms often rely on social interactions, both between clients and between professional colleagues, to forge new network connections that support the health of their business. The development of these social relationships no longer just take place in the real world, however; today, social media can be used to build and support a firm’s growth. Here’s how law firms are using social media today to accomplish those goals.
Social Media Provides Excellent Networking Possibilities
The primary function of social media, in terms of a law firm that has a social media presence, is that it provides excellent possibilities for networking. With the advent of professional social media networking sites like LinkedIn, it’s easier than ever to build an ever-broadening network of professional connections between law firms and other legal service providers that can help a firm’s marketing reach when it comes to finding new clients. Additionally, posting content on social media can aid in building a law firm’s reputation as having expertise in a specific field of law, which can also drive new client activity.
Social Media Lets Firms Stay Ahead of New Trends
The benefits of social media aren’t just in posting content to build network connections and drive client figures. Law firms that don’t just produce content but consume the content of others can keep track of emerging trends in that content to stay ahead of new trends in specific instances. One strong example of this is in instances related to incipient class action lawsuits, as a sudden uptick in social media mentions regarding a specific product or service’s negative effects can act as a red flag for further investigation.
Social Media Can Have a Direct Impact on Cases
While most law firms will limit their social media exposure to professional networks like LinkedIn, attorneys and legal professionals can use more mainstream social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to gather data that could have a direct impact on a case the firm has taken on.
Publicly available information on these networks can often be used to influence cases at trial, as data can be used to reinforce or discredit witnesses, jurors, or plaintiffs or defendants themselves. An excellent example of this would be a set of vacation photos on an individual’s social media page depicting them waterskiing when they’re attempting to claim disability during the same period of time.
Social Media Can Help You Hire Your Next Attorney
A law firm on the hunt for a new attorney often has a plethora of prospects they need to sort through, and this makes intelligence gathering an important task to ensure that your next hire is going to reflect positively on the firm. Perusing the social media content created by new prospects on sites like LinkedIn can be elucidating to say the least, as this could provide a much more well-rounded look at the prospect’s professional reputation beyond that of a resume or CV.
How Technology has Changed the Practice of Law
The practice of law has been around for a very long time. As civilization evolves, so does our approach to practicing law. Nowhere is this more obvious than how technological developments, even just over the past few years, have changed how legal professionals approach their job. Here’s a few examples.
Electronic Document Filing Makes Life Easier for Lawyers
No one in the legal profession likes dealing with preparing and filing court documents. It’s a tedious, expensive process, made even worse by how absolutely crucial it is — even the slightest mistake can lead to the courts rejecting your documents. In some cases, the delays caused by having to re-file could cost you cases and clients, simply because someone put the wrong case number on a document.
Not so when jurisdictions accept documents that can be prepared and sent electronically. Instead of having to hand-deliver a stack of paper documents by way of a courier, law firms can upload PDF versions of these same documents. The time and money saved in doing so provide ample opportunities to ensure each document is thoroughly vetted before upload, thus reducing errors overall by a sizable margin.
Heightened Connectivity Democratizes Individual Access to Legal Professionals
Access to the internet is increasingly common as time and technology march on. Whether it’s a netbook, a mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet, or even just access to a friend with these items, individuals have the option to use the internet when it comes to pursuing a need for an attorney. As a result, the ability to find and speak with a legal professional is much easier today than in years past.
People can use a search engine to find the address and phone number of a nearby law firm, read any pertinent online reviews, and then reach out to speak to a lawyer directly. In some instances, there’s no need to even leave the comfort of their own home. For instance, video conferencing technologies like Skype make it easy for those with mobility issues to still seek, and get, the legal aid they need.
Cloud Computing Makes it Easier to Work from Anywhere, with Anyone, at Any Time
Many legal professionals spend just as much time out in the field as they do in the office. Whether it’s meeting with clients, attending depositions, representing clients in court, or simply traveling from one location to the next, there’s a lot of legwork involved in practicing law. This meant that a lot of catch-up work needed to be done once you got back to the office.
Today, however, this simply isn’t the case. Being able to stay connected with your law firm remotely through cloud-based technologies means you don’t have to sync work done in the field once you get back to your desk. Uploading documents on the fly to a cloud-based server provides you have the access needed to work efficiently and productively and makes it easier than ever to collaborate with colleagues in real-time wherever they are.
There’s Even More Innovation on the Horizon
These examples aren’t the limit of how technology has changed how we practice law. New innovations on the horizon are sure to be even more revolutionary in ways that we might not even be able to predict. It might be uncertain as to what the future holds, but there’s one thing you can bet on: it’s going to change things even more.
5 Productivity Tools Your Law Firm Should Be Using
Managing a law firm effectively requires high levels of organizational dedication and oversight. That being said, ensuring your firm remains productive isn’t something that you can accomplish without the right tools at your disposal. Here are five of the best productivity tools your firm should be using if you want to build a professional reputation.
Evernote
Note-taking app Evernote is an incredibly versatile tool that should be in every legal professional’s playbook. Featuring the ability to capture notes on the fly, organize them, and then share them quickly and easily. From scanning business cards with your phone camera to importing content from whole websites, Evernote is a flexible tool for information gathering, especially while you’re out of the office and don’t have the luxury of writing emails or drafting memos on a laptop or desktop.
Dropbox
Evernote might be great while you’re on the go, but you also need a robust data storage and sharing solution for interoffice communication, too. Dropbox is an excellent solution for law office productivity, as the cloud-based document management tool can act as a digital server for an entire law firm. Allowing users to maintain a local folder that then gets synced to the cloud, Dropbox offers seamless integration to office staff, ensuring you don’t get bogged down in needlessly copying files to specific locations – just drag and drop and you’re done. Available as a mobile app as well, Dropbox works to keep you connected to the office, providing you with crucial documents even when you’re in the field.
Rocket Matter
Project management software specifically created to support legal practices, Rocket Matter is a full-figured platform that offers a number of benefits. Providing billing optimization, casework management, scheduling tools, secure collaboration, and full integration with Office 365 on PC, Mac, and mobile, Rocket Matter is a popular choice for law firms both big and small that need some extra organizational framework. Rocket Matter also integrates with Dropbox and Evernote, offering high levels of synergy to legal professionals already using these tools.
TextBlade
If you’ve ever cursed your inability to enter text quickly and accurately on your smartphone, you wouldn’t be the first. Up until now, alternatives have been voice-to-text apps, which can be dodgy at best, or using a larger, more cumbersome device like a laptop or tablet. TextBlade changes all that – its innovative, miniature Bluetooth multitouch keyboard offers uncramped typing, but folds together into a little rectangle 1/3 the size of an iPhone after use. Magnetic self-assembly and packing means never having to fiddle with it, either.
Process Street
Simple and free-to-use, checklist software Process Street is a powerful tool for managing workflows for any size team of legal professionals. Featuring easy to create process templates, the ability to use that template as a checklist across multiple instances, and offering progress tracking and collaboration capabilities across your team, Process Street is lightweight and versatile, making it ideal for not just individual and project management in a legal setting but in any professional setting.
Common Reasons For Court Filing Rejections - And How To Avoid Them
You’ve done your due diligence. You’ve dotted every I and crossed every T, proofread it what seems like a dozen times, gotten it into the proper hands well before the deadline — and still, the court rejects your filing. What gives? What are you doing wrong?
The truth is that court filing rejections are much more common than you think. Every instance is different, but here are just a few of the most common reasons the court might reject your next filing.
Wrong Case Number and/or Location
It’s important to note that the case number of the filing appears in multiple locations – the filing itself and on the document. If even one of these numbers doesn’t match the other, the court is going to reject the filing. Yes, even if the case number on the filing is the correct one.
Meanwhile, another very common mistake is to file your documents in the wrong court altogether. This is less of an oversight issue, considering the relative complexity of the court system. However, there are some tools out there to prevent this from happening. If you’re filing a new case in Los Angeles, for example, you can check the Filing Court Locator before you submit the documents. A simple ZIP code check can save you or your firm some serious time and/or money.
Faulty Documents
Beyond issues like incorrect case numbers or literally filing the documents in the wrong court, there are plenty of other mistakes that can result in a rejection. Legibility is a major concern, and it’s something that comes up increasingly thanks to the transition to electronic submission. Issues like improper scanning, submitting in an incorrect format, or not including required file attachments can all be the kiss of death for eFiled court documents.
Of course, there are plenty of other issues that can cause a rejection — ones that aren’t necessarily caused by electronic document delivery issues. Filling out a court form that’s old and obsolete isn’t going to win you any fans with the court clerk, and neither is leaving any of the documents you submit without having the proper signatures on them.
Some of these issues can be fixed simply through higher levels of diligence. Others are more technical, especially when it comes to scanning documents – ensuring you’re saving scanned docs in black and white, that these documents are being scanned exclusively in PDF format, and making sure your printer settings are set to a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi) can all make scanned documents clearer and easy to read.
Court Filing Rejections are Not Cost-Effective
There’s no arguing the point that having court filing rejections are costly. The time wasted in preparing these documents, only to have to prepare them again, means less time spent on other, possibly more important matters; the financial cost is also significant, considering that you’ll have to pay even more filing fees to re-submit.
What you need, of course, is a more cost-effective solution. Let’s face it: your lawyers and support staff are already working at full capacity. That’s why these filing rejections happen, as no one has the bandwidth to make sure these documents are vetted properly before submission. Your firm needs to farm your document submission process to a third party — but not just any outfit will do.
How to Avoid a Court Filing Rejection at the Court
Triple-check everything.
It’s always a good habit to double-check your work. Is that enough? Usually yes, but when it comes to court documents, you should always take the time to give them one last review before sending them to be filed. That last review can be crucial in catching a wrongly dated form or a missing signature; even an out-of-date Proof of Service. When you’ve finished filling in a form or titling a document, check it. When it looks good, check it again. Before sending it, check it one more time. Your client, your case or your reputation could depend on it.
Why Law Firms Are Switching To An Online Service Provider
Being a legal professional is tough. It’s nowhere near what it’s like in John Grisham novels or Hollywood’s dramatic courtroom dramas – you’ve got countless hours of education, on-the-job training in the form of internships, and then the actual minutiae of the actual position to endure every day.
Nowhere is this truer than the sheer amount of paperwork that a legal professional must deal with on any given day.
When you’re responsible for the legal filing services for a law firm, you’re not just submitting a few briefs here and there – lawyers, legal professionals, and staff are inundated, each and every day, with legal documents that not only have to be created, reviewed and delivered to the courts but have to be precise and submitted so in a timely manner, as even the smallest error – or missing what seems like an unimportant-seeming deadline – can spell disaster for law firms and the clients they represent.
Filing legal documents correctly and on time is often a thankless, tedious job but one that’s absolutely crucial. Serious adverse consequences can occur if filings are not done properly, up to and including your court case being dismissed outright on procedural grounds. That’s why, if you’re a legal professional, it’s vital to move to adopt an online attorney service firm today.
The Old Way of Doing Things is Just Too Slow
Think about it this way: the old way of getting your legal documents to the court or your process server is just too slow and antiquated, especially in the 21st century. The wheels of justice might grind exceedingly slow, but there’s no reason you must adhere to that snail’s pace of getting your documents filed and served or your proofs of service and conformed copies back – not when you have the ability to enlist an online court filing service that provides you a way to upload your documents electronically to accomplish these essential tasks.
Traditional methods of getting your documents ready for pick up also includes you spending valuable time on the preparation process printing these documents out, ensuring they’re collated correctly, and scheduling a pickup. If the papers are not ready when the courier shows up, you may have to call someone back later. That could be costly. 
Missing any errors, meanwhile, is even worse. A court runner who picks up your documents many times won’t discover errors until he’s at the court. Not only is that a waste of time and money, doing so can get these documents rejected at the very last minute which could be devastating to your case.
Alternatively, when you upload your documents to an online attorney service provider, you get another set of eyes on your filing before it’s delivered to the court. Potential mistakes are found sooner – rather than later. This can result in less rejections and a greater success rate for your cases.
Types of Court Services
Sometimes it feels as if there are as many different types of court documents that need to be filed as there are minutes in the day. To that end, rules and requirements may vary from court to court.
In some jurisdictions, physical copies of documents are required to be hand delivered, seemingly obviating the need of an online service provider. However, many service providers have the capabilities of receiving the electronic version of your document near the appropriate jurisdiction, printing them locally and then personally delivering the hard copy of that document on your behalf. These hybrid online services can be considered the best of both worlds – the speed and reliability of electronic delivery combined with the attention to detail that you need from a service that physically files your court documents.
Of course, not all court documents need to end up in the hands of a file clerk at the courthouse. Some of those documents, such as a service of process order, can be uploaded from your computer and delivered to a local registered process server and hand-delivered to the right people. Proof of service documents are often filed afterward, and many Attorney Service Providers can even provide skip trace services as well.
Not Just Quicker and More Accurate but More Affordable As Well
The wheels of justice require constant lubrication. In the context of filing court documents, this lubrication comes in the form of the myriad fees that you need to pay in order to have these documents accepted. Whether it’s in a family law court, civil unlimited, unlimited state court, municipal court, or if it’s on the federal circuit, each and every document has a differently-priced fee requirement, and there are no guarantees that you will receive a refund for an incorrectly filed document.
This is yet another reason why it’s advantageous to use a trusted online legal service provider instead of managing the court filings yourself.
Additionally, as if this wasn’t enough of an incentive, the fees charged by online service providers are often comparable to – or even more affordable than – making use of a courier service to run prepared physical documents to the court for filing.
Did you know? You can upload your documents from your desk in Los Angeles, and your service provider can get your filings done in many places like San Francisco or Orange County. You can even serve someone Nationwide simply by uploading your documents. Your administration cost is greatly reduced by using one service provider rather than several courier services.
Choosing the Right Online Services Provider
At this point, it might have become patently clear that you need to transition from your existing court filing process. Clinging to the old, traditional model of how court filings are handled is not only costing you time, it’s also generating undue amounts of stress and may even lead to having to pay for even the smallest mistake. No, it’s unquestionably time that you enlist the help of a company that provides professional online services.
Many legal professionals rely on outsourcing the management of their filings and serves to legal filing service as a method for taking some of the stress off their own shoulders. Yet this represents another possible problem – there’s no telling whether this third party is going to be as diligent and timely as you are with your court filings and serves.
So where do you turn? How do you choose the right attorney service provider? It’s important to ensure that you choose the best company for your needs, as it has to be able to provide you the quality level of filing and serving services that you, as a legal professional, require. This can easily become an exhausting process.
Thankfully, there is one company that has both the skills and the expertise to provide you the court eFiling, physical filing and process serving services you require. You can turn to an expert attorney service provider like Rapid Legal for all of your filing and serving legal document needs.
About Rapid Legal
Dedicated to accountability, excellence, and integrity, Rapid Legal, founded in 1994 has more than three decades of experience in the legal industry. Rapid Legal was an early adopter and provider of eFiling services in the California counties that have adopted eFiling and continues this tradition today in providing fast, accurate, and affordable services to law firms, government agencies, and companies across the US.
Rapid Legal provides a wide range of legal services. It specializes in both electronic filing (eFiling) and physical court filing by hand-delivering documents for clients who upload them to Rapid Legal’s portal. Additionally, Rapid Legal can ensure one of its process servers physically delivers a digitally uploaded document for the service of process anywhere in California and Nationwide.
That’s not all that Rapid Legal offers. In addition to these three valued services, it also provides fast and reliable nationwide records retrieval service, county recording services for documents such as liens, judgments, and notices, and Secretary of State filing for documents like incorporation articles. Rapid Legal even offers courtesy copy delivery to wherever such copies may need to be sent to a particular department or judge’s chambers.
The Rapid Legal Difference
Rapid Legal is one of the most affordable options when it comes to filing legal documents either physically or electronically. With its offer of multiple tiers of service, Rapid Legal ensures that you’ll never have to pay too much for the level of service you need.
Rapid Legal knows how vital it is to make sure that legal documents are submitted in a reliable, timely matter, which is why it provides the highest of guarantees to its customers.
Rapid Legal doesn’t simply subject your uploaded documents to a mindless, automated filing process. Its expert document inspectors are tasked with placing the documents you submit through a seven-point process to ensure they are free of any errors that could result in rejection by the courts. In fact, if Rapid Legal does provide you with improper or incorrect service, your service is guaranteed to be free of charge, proving once again that the company is dedicated to providing you with the highest possible level of service.
Get fast and friendly customer support from Rapid Legal. You can call the team of industry experts for quick answers to all your filing questions.
Don’t Delay – Use Rapid Legal’s Online Option Today
Upload your documents and we’ll handle the rest. Create An Account to get started.
5 Benefits of Having Your Law Firm on LinkedIn
LinkedIn, one of the most popular professional social networking sites, offers excellent networking opportunities to attorneys or other legal professionals. However, that there are some excellent reasons for your law firm to have its own LinkedIn account as well — here are five of the best benefits to having your firm on LinkedIn.
1. It’s the Easiest Way to Establish an Online Presence
New or small-scale firms often face challenges in designing and implementing an online presence. Ideally, you want your own standalone website where you can market your firm, but this can be a strain on your firm’s resources. An excellent solution to this challenge is to utilize the integrated tools that LinkedIn offers businesses to publish business-related content.
2. It’s an Excellent Supplement to Content Existing Elsewhere
Even if you already have a pre-existing website and blog for your law firm, LinkedIn still offers excellent benefits in that it provides supplementary support to content already in existence elsewhere. In fact, your LinkedIn network can act as a completely new audience for your existing content; simply revise your original content, back-link to your website or blog, and re-publish the newly-adapted content on LinkedIn to maximize its reach.
3. It Provides High Levels of Visibility
Search engine algorithms being what they are, it’s always going to be a fight to ensure your firm’s website is optimized properly. However, having your firm securely ensconced on LinkedIn boosts your visibility thanks to the social network’s already high authority when it comes to search queries. This means any and all content you publish through LinkedIn, including blog posts, will benefit from this heightened visibility.
Additionally, businesses with an active LinkedIn profile may be interpreted to be more professional than those that aren’t by outside observers. Taking the time to create and maintain a profile for your firm demonstrates high levels of professionalism to visitors that may be in need of a law firm.
4. It Puts the “Network” Back Into Social Network
As a platform, LinkedIn provides ample opportunities for users to forge connections outside their network of immediate colleagues. LinkedIn makes it a point to curate content based on user interests, which means that any content you publish through the platform will end up in the feeds of other legal professionals. This will, in turn, drive your firm’s followers on the site, expanding your networking reach and allowing you to forge new, beneficial connections with other legal professionals.
5. It Provides Built-In Data Metrics
LinkedIn provides a suite of built-in data metrics and analytical tools that help you gauge the engagement levels of your posted content. This sort of feedback is crucial in shaping your firm’s marketing strategy on the platform, as you can quickly and easily discern which types of content resonate with your network and which types of content doesn’t. Using these metrics to shift the focus of your content will drive more network connections which, in turn, can lead to the growth of your firm.
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Why Easy is Good
People say you need to work hard to get ahead in life, but things change. When new tech approaches make it easier to accomplish tasks without working hard, suddenly “easy” becomes the new “good”.
You Don’t Have to Choose Between Easy and Good Anymore
There’s an old adage: you can either do things the easy way, or do them the right way. The saying implies that if you want to get something done right, you need to take your time, even if it’s hard; there are no shortcuts to success, and trying to cut corners is only going to come back to haunt you.
While the sentiment is certainly admirable, this ultra-orthodox, traditional approach to success where hard work is good and taking the easy route is a lazy path that’s doomed to fail is simply no longer accurate today. The advent of modern technologies means that today, the old, hard way of doing something isn’t necessarily the best way to accomplish that task.
Life is for the Living
There’s nothing wrong with making life easier. Your pen-pal halfway across the globe is minutes away instead of weeks or months, thanks to airmail giving way to e-mail. You can use 3D printing to create a replacement part from scratch in hours instead of taking days or weeks to track one down and have it shipped to you. Mobile and online banking allow you to deposit money into your account and pay your bills electronically instead of having to head down to your local bank branch.
In such instances – and countless others – the technology that makes our lives easier makes them better. This is true in our professional lives, as well – fax machines, copiers, scanners, and electronic document delivery have revolutionized every facet of professional office work. When it comes to the legal profession – one that revolves around massive amounts of crucial paperwork – the “easy” way is most certainly the best way, as long as it’s not just quick but also reliable and trustworthy.
Rapid Legal’s Answer to How Easy is Good
Have you ever had one of those days? You’re running around at breakneck speed from dawn to dusk, ensuring that the right documents are prepared and filed properly. This requires an intense attention to detail. Mistakes with legal documents can lead to a case being lost or even dismissed outright, and it’s both costly and time-consuming to ensure these documents are as flawless as possible before they’re delivered to the courts on time.
Meanwhile, all these legal documents that need to be filed and served aren’t the only important things you need to do on any given day. The more time you spend on handling legal documents, the less time you’ll have for managing the rest of your duties. You need a quick solution to get this facet of your job done quickly so you can move on – a system that harnesses modern connectivity, allowing you to upload your files from your computer and have them delivered electronically. Being able to quickly place orders in this manner is expected in this day and age, but you need to make sure the service provider and system you use has been designed from the ground up to not just be fast and easy to use, but to be accurate as well.
That’s where Rapid Legal comes in. We included legal professionals in the design process of building our easy-to-use system. The end result? Our electronic file & serve system enables both attorneys and legal support staff alike to quickly place orders for eFiling and eService, easily manage cases and corresponding documents and retrieve Conformed Copies and Proofs of Service anytime. You can rest assured that our systems are here to make your life better by making things easier – and that easy is indeed good.
How Service of Process Works
Service of process is a linchpin of the entire US judicial system. As such, it’s important to understand how it works and what to expect. Here’s what you need to know about how service of process works.
What Triggers Process Service?
Service of process comes into play under specific circumstances. Usually, this means that someone has filed a formal complaint against someone else, claiming a physical or financial injury, or violating a specific law or laws. Once this complaint gets filed with the courts, it’s time to move on to the next step – notifying the defendant of the complaint lodged against them.
You’ve Been Served
Because our legal system strives to be fair and just, informing a defendant that a complaint has been filed against them is a crucial step. This is, of course, the part of the process that people are most familiar with. Documents detailing that complaint need to be delivered to the defendant in a way that is verifiable; this is where process servers are hired to physically serve these documents to the defendant before the case against them can proceed.
Service of process is usually depicted on television or movies in a questionable manner; a shady defendant goes to great lengths to avoid being served by a process server who relies on subterfuge to do their job, for instance. This is, of course, wildly exaggerated; process servers are highly professional and have an exhaustive, almost encyclopedic knowledge as to what’s permitted and what’s not when it comes to serving a defendant papers.
Not Just for Defendants
Service of process isn’t exclusively used to alert defendants that there is a complaint lodged against them. In many instances, you may be served papers to request your appearance or response at a court proceeding. Most commonly this will be to have a deposition taken, pursuant to a subpoena, to produce certain documents related to a court case, or even to testify in open court.
Order in the Court
Service of process is serious business. Hiring a process server is an integral step in pursuing a case. Meanwhile, not responding to service of process is a bad idea, as this can lead to you losing your case, contempt-of-court, hefty fines, or even jail time.
Whichever way you look at it, process service is an integral part of any legal action, whether in state or federal court.
Favorite Legal Research Tips and/or Tools
Pulling your hair out in your own practice? Don’t know where to start or which direction to turn? Here’s a collection of Rapid Legal’s favorite legal research tips and tools to make your life easier.
Understand the Issue
Before you begin, you have to take steps to ensure that you have as full an understanding of the issue as possible. This might seem like 1L stuff but the truth is that you need this foundational information to work a case effectively – not taking this first step seriously could jeopardize your ability to do so in the future.
Understand the Controlling Statute
Before you start drafting and filing paperwork on a case, you also need to ensure that the statute or case precedent you’re relying upon is still good law. This means identifying the scope of the controlling statute and analyzing whether your current issue falls within that scope. It also means checking that subsequent case law hasn’t altered the law’s reading in a way that might reflect negatively on your own case.
Create Your Own Specified Resource List
Plenty of law firms have a list of easily-accessible resources for attorneys and legal professionals to peruse while building a case for a client. Wile these lists are obviously designed to make it less strenuous to conduct research, oftentimes you’re going to need a specific resource that exists off-list.
To save time and energy in the future, either for yourself or for colleagues, create and maintain your own specified resource lists. These can be as simple as a set of bookmarks in your web browser or as complex as a cross-referenced Excel spreadsheet; the level of detail is up to you.
Step Back and Evaluate Your Progress
It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when you’ve got thirteen different books on case law open on your desk and twice as many windows open on your desktop. If it feels like you’re drowning in information but still not finding the knowledge you seek, step back and gain some perspective.
A highly-defined focus is good for single issues, but has the side-effect of making it easier to miss the bigger picture. Stepping back and examining your progress so far can aid in pinpointing logical fallacies or weaknesses in your argument, errors in attribution, or any number of other issues that could result in a negative outcome.
When All Else Fails, Turn to Your Colleagues
There’s a reason it’s called the “practice” of law – you need to literally practice for years before learning all there is to learn, and with the legal landscape changing all the time thanks to the malleable nature of case precedent, an effective legal professional has to demonstrate high levels of mental agility that need to be learned over time.
No one woke up the morning after passing the bar with an invitation to sit on the US Supreme Court. It’s only through years of practice and study – and enlisting the help of colleagues – that you’ll put your best foot forward. That’s why it’s never a bad idea to solicit opinions and advice from paralegals, associates, partners, law librarians; access to the knowledge your colleagues possess will always be the best tool at your disposal.