What is service of process? What does a Process Server Actually Do?

You might be wondering, "What is a process server?" In today's video, I'm actually going to tell you exactly what a process server does. You might be surprised. A process server only has one very specific job. It's to get the papers to the person that is listed on them. And it's really just as simple as this, and we're going to get it. So let's go.

Let me step back away from the door a little bit. Hi. Yeah, I have a delivery for a Susie Q. Okay. All right, that's you? Yeah. Okay, here you go. Thank you so much. Those are legal documents. Make sure you go to court on the date that's on there. Thank you so much. Okay. Have a good day. That's how it's done.

So you might be thinking to yourself, "Mike, that's cool. Process serving seems pretty simple. But why should I listen to you?" So you might not know me. My name is Michael Reed, also known as Mighty Mike, the Mighty Mike podcast, as well as Process Server Daily, where I interview the top process serving firms across the country. I've also founded MightyProcessServer.com, which is the number one directory for process servers, and the number one community of process servers that I teach and coach to build their businesses. I think what made me most popular was my 10K challenge, where I teach and basically went live every day for 15 days and built a brand new process serving agency that made over $12,000 in that time in a brand new area. And this is after I built my business, 123 Legal Support in California. And so this is something you and anyone can do if they put in the effort.

So I'm going to tell you a few things about what a process server is and what they do, but just to give you a little context about who I am and what we're out here accomplishing. So what does a process server do? Just knock on doors? What is it that makes a process server necessary in your life? That might be what you're asking.

You can't see it very well, but right here there's a dent and some scratches. This is from somebody in a parking lot that dinged my car. That is one scenario where you can hire a process server. If you were to sue this person in a small claims court, you would need to serve them using a process server. I've heard people say that, "Oh, you're a process server. You must be serving all of the bad criminals and people in the world and it must be terrible." The funny thing about that is when you serve enough people, you realize that everyone. Everyone gets served at some point.

You see this fence line right here? This fence line was mapped out by somebody from the city. They came out and they said, "This is exactly where your fence line goes, Mike." So me and my boys put in a bunch of poles. Pretty freaking straight, right? One day I served the sweetest old couple because they paid someone to put the fence in and it was on the wrong side. It was about two feet into their neighbor's yard. Their neighbor was so mad, they said, "Take it down." And they said, "Listen, you don't even use those two feet. It's not a big deal." But a fence line, if left there long enough, actually changes the property line. There's some legal stuff, every state's a little bit different. But process servers serve the good, the bad, the ugly, and sometimes the beautiful.

I would tell you, as a process server, you serve all kinds of documents. You serve summons, complaints, subpoenas. A subpoena is interesting because as a process server, you think you're always serving one of the parties of the case. A subpoena is actually saying someone who had nothing to do with a case. They may not even know anything about the case, but because they were at that traffic light when you hit this person or when that person hit you, you serve them the subpoena and it commands them to come testify in that case. And if they don't show up to court, they can also go to jail, which is kind of wild.

One of the most common things that people get confused about when it comes to process servers and their rights and what they're able to do is that it's different in every state. Some states allow you to simply walk inside. If there's no lock on the gate, you can simply walk inside, like California. It allows you to go through a gate to drive through if the property allows to drive your car on their property in order to get it served, and this is just one of the things that a process server might do in order to get it served. Whereas a sheriff's department or a marshal may have different rules that don't allow them to do that for a civil case. You have criminal cases, civil cases, family law cases, probate cases, and juvenile cases that all change the rules for how something is served depending on the state.

You can see, with this gate, we've got some dogs, and they seem friendly. But are they? You never know. You enter into a gate uninvited with dogs. You have an assumed risk, okay? If you see something on the gate that says do not trespass, we'll be shot on sight. You should believe the sign, because no serve is worth your life.

So one thing to be aware of if you're going to hire a local process server or a nationwide process server is that they are going to have different rates. They're going to have different insurance and different things that allow them to be able to serve in your area. For example, my company, 123 Legal Support, we serve the whole country, but most of our effort actually goes into finding the best servers and getting them verified. And we use a tool called Mighty Process Server, which is something that my team and I created once we started the community of process servers at Mighty Process Server. And what it allows you to do is to be able to save local servers, and then local servers will actually upload a copy of their registration, their license, their insurance, their LLC information. Even their EIN and corporate data is on there. So you can see if they have a bond, that type of insurance, they have all of that stuff is uploaded and they're encouraged to do it as an independent contractor, because if they do, they get bonuses on the platform. And so this is what we do, and it allows us to be able to get communication directly from the server to us and to the client in real time. They even have a tool called in route feature, which actually shows like an Uber driver shows the driver in route, the server in route to the job, and actually when they get to the door and everything.

So it's important that when you're hiring a server, whether local or nationwide, you understand what they are, what they are capable of and what they do. And process serving is not for everyone. Somebody who isn't good at communicating with people, somebody who is quick to anger, somebody who has issues dealing with authority. You know, a law firm process server, someone who's a process server that gets hired primarily by law firms, are going to be different than someone that you hire, who is an independent process server that doesn't accept work from law firms. They only take work from process. You know, and then you have some people who just do it all. I think as a business owner, you should take the business from all of them. But understand that it's a very different type of business model and a service that you're offering a pro se needs to be explained. Like a pro se is someone anytime I work with an individual who's trying to serve their wife or their husband, or their, there's some individual thing and they're not hiring an attorney, they're doing it themselves. I'm going to take an extra minute to explain to them that a process server makes attempts to deliver the documents. They're not just doing it. It's not like a FedEx package. You know, FedEx, you hire them to go deliver a package somewhere. And if it doesn't get there, you can file a refund request because they fail to deliver. But a process server gets paid to try to make the attempts. They don't get paid to actually get it served. Why? Because oftentimes the person who you're trying to serve doesn't want what you're serving. Okay. So it's a different animal to different bees.

So if you decided it'd be a process server and I've made lots of other videos about this, you have to understand that that's a different element of it that you might make the attempts and it doesn't actually get served. You might even be like me when I started and get a paper and have it and say you'll do unlimited attempts and just put the paper on your desk because you genuinely are tired of making attempts. But you haven't served it yet and your client is counting on you. Your individual customer, whoever's serving, whoever, they're calling you going, Mike, any luck, any luck and you're like, no, and you've tried it. You've exhausted all your leads. So this is a common thing that I hear from people who have not set up their business like a business. They're still serving like they're an independent contractor. Now if that's you, that's fine. You can do this job part time. And if you're looking to hire a process server part time, you can go to mightyprocessserver.com. It's a nationwide directory for process servers. And you can find both nationwide. The featured listing people are generally statewide listings and then independent servers across the nation. The probably the coolest thing about our platform versus others is that when you post a job on Mighty Process Server, you get bids from multiple providers in that area. And then you get to look at their credentials and their rates and make an educated decision. This is how it should have been done a long time ago, but it took me and my team to come in and do it to make it a reality.

So, alright, the next element I want to show you is going to require that I jump into my computer. So let's get out of my Harley room and let's go check it out. Alright, so we're here at my computer and I'm going to do a screen share and I'm going to share with you guys something called an affidavit. The thing that you have to know about a process server is yes, they go knock on the door. Yes, somebody answers. And, you know, sometimes they don't answer, you have to keep going back. But once successful service or non-service is achieved, you get something called an affidavit or a proof of service. If it's not served, it'll be a declaration of non-service. So if they make four attempts and they're unable to serve it, they'll give you a declaration of non-service. So a process server isn't just somebody who is out there chasing down guys trying to serve them right. They also have something we call in the process serving business, a deliverable. A deliverable, the actual service that's provided is that legal document that they sign either under penalty of perjury or they get it notarized. Those are the two primary ways that an affidavit is delivered to the customer. So I'm going to show you some examples and just to give you a full picture of what it is to be a process server and what you can expect if you were to hire one. Alright, let's go ahead and dive into it.

Okay, so this right here is the job detail screen and I won't explain all of this. Just know that every process server uses a software that helps them manage their business. If they don't and they're using Google Sheets or something like that, you might not get the communication that you expect. Communication like automatically sending you attempts or affidavits once they're signed, etc. Our team at 123 Legal Support, we use Mighty Process Server. It includes up to 25 jobs for free for life every single month to help independent process servers kind of get on their feet. So there's no reason why they can't use state-of-the-art software to be able to provide excellent service. Now you can that server that you hire like 123 Legal Support, we will then hire process servers all over the country and we give them the tools and we're able to request status from them. And once they update status, it shows up like this. They add their attempts attempt one attempt to attempt three and so on. And then they can make an affidavit. So if I was going to make a new affidavit, I can click on an affidavit. Let's say like this one, for example, and the system auto pre-fills based on the attempts that have been made and gives all the details that were included during those service attempts, including the person's name. This is just like a generic example of one where the server can actually include their branding, which most courts don't like that. I don't recommend that, but you know, you could do it if it was a declaration. And then you have standard statewide. So every state has particular documents that they want. Not all states have or have very specific documents that they require, but you can see as you go through and you see the different documents are available here under Texas, you can click on it. And it's a Texas document for a motion of a substitute in service or return of service. Okay, there's different documents. So every state has them. They're all uploaded in here. And this is basically what it looks like when you get a proof of service back.

So one example could be in California, you have a lot of different document types. Let's just say proof of service of small claims. It's like one of the most common ones. If you're serving someone like the example of the defense being on the wrong side. The information is pre-filled. They can change it. They can move the data around the way they want it. They can go ahead and save it. And then ultimately they sign it. And they can sign it using the system. They have a safe signature. They can use their safe signature. It'll place it on the document. And then it'll show up the way that it's going to look when it's going to be printed. See here like that. And then this gets either e-filed or sent back to you depending on the service that they offer. Every process server is an independent contractor. Some are employees that work for bigger companies, but probably 95% of them are independent contractors and whatever service they offer is what they're, they'll tell them. So I always recommend asking them to e-file it for you. They say, "Oh, we don't do that." Then that tells you kind of where they are. They're more of an independent process server. And you can always use 123efile.com or Mighty Process Server has their own, which is called Mighty eFile. And they also have the ability to notarize inside of the system.

So that's what it looks like to get an affidavit back. It should show up in your email automatically. So you can also preview the affidavit like this, and it'll show up like that. So inside of your system as a customer of Mighty Process Server, you'll be able to see these line items and be able to review the affidavit. And if there's something wrong with it, you can reject it and ultimately you can give them a review. So Jessica will give her a five-star review. You can see what that looks like. She's a rock star. Just getting the rock star treatment. And that's it, guys. If you have questions about what it is, what kind of proof of service that you need, you can go to mightyprocessserver.com and click on this little AI chat. This is a chat that has been embedded with all of Mighty Process Server state laws. So every single law, every single law in the country for every single state lives here inside of the law library. And we've taken extra steps to make sure this literally has every single process server law. So if I do, you know, California, small claims, it'll bring up specific cards that reference that all the different laws for California are right here. And so you can just click it. You can read the full law. Go to the law page for California, and it'll break it down for you in great detail. Now the site is protected from copying and from bots. But we added this copy button specifically for individuals and law firms that want to be able to copy this specific law with the civil code or procedure and all that stuff. The CCP code, the business and professions code is referenced here. So if you wanted to add it to your case, you could quickly do that just by hitting copy, paste it into your case and you're off to the races. You can also review different process servers here. And I encourage you to watch the other video I created on how to hire a process server, because I break down for you how you can look and see the different qualifications here inside a Mighty Process Server. And you can look at other platforms as well. We encourage you to shop around and find the best solution for you. So thank you so much. And if you haven't already checked out Mighty Process Server, go to mightyprocessserver.com and we'll see you guys in the next video.