Electronic Delivery System for Subpoenas - A Case Study

• March 01, 2011
• by Jeff Karotkin

The City of Inglewood and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office wanted to implement an automated electronic delivery system for Police Department subpoenas. The electronic delivery system needed to constitute legal service of the subpoena.

Implementation of an “Electronic Delivery System” to deliver subpoena data was needed to provide timely and efficient service to police officers who work a variety of shifts and create an audit trail for delivery and receipt of the subpoena. It was crucial to create a system that provided: confirmed identification of relevant parties, uniform search criteria and scalability to serve multiple cities Police and City Attorney Departments in the future, The system needed to be web-based solution for ease of administration and end-user access via web browser for the Police Officer served with the subpoena, provide real-time notification, monitoring of all Subpoena activities and easy to use reports for management.

This is yet another example of the landscape changing in a way we didn't expect just a few short years ago. I have heard several process servers say... At least this does not affect us. Really in jurisdictions all over the country, this same thing is happening and process servers are being displaced, the act of service of process physically is replaced with systems that offer tremendous efficiencies to all the agencies involved. To suggest otherwise is naive.

I am not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, I am simply pointing out that it is happening and we process servers need to be informed so we can make intelligent decisions about what it means to each of our businesses moving forward.