Field notes from legal process.
Statute deep dives, California procedural guides, skip-trace ethics, and product notes. Written by the people running Servd.
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Process serving in California: the complete guide
Everything a paralegal or pro se litigant needs to know about getting papers served in California — statutes, deadlines, fees, and what can go wrong.
Filing in Los Angeles County: which courthouse, which division
LA County is the largest court system in the country. Filing in the wrong division costs days. Here is how to pick the right courthouse the first time.
When sub-service works (and when it doesn't) in California
CCP §415.20 sub-service is misunderstood by every paralegal at least once. Here is exactly when it's available and when it's not.
Skip trace, FCRA, and what we won't do
Skip trace is a regulated activity. The Fair Credit Reporting Act draws a hard line between litigation-support tracing and consumer-report tracing. Here is the boundary.
Anatomy of a CCP §2015.5 affidavit
Every California process-server affidavit has to satisfy six elements under CCP §2015.5. Here's what they are, why they matter, and how Servd's PDF generator produces them.
Why we built Servd
After ten years running a traditional process-serving company, the thing that finally pushed us to rebuild from scratch was watching paralegals call us seven times for the same status update.
California UD timeline: 5-day answer, what process servers must know
The unlawful detainer answer clock is five days. Every other deadline in the UD calendar is downstream from how service was completed. Get the service wrong and the rest doesn't matter.
We don't treat our process servers as gig workers
The dominant model in process serving is gig-platform race-to-the-bottom. We picked the opposite model on purpose. Here is what that means for servers and for the customer.