The purpose of this report is to bring the members up
to speed on the ABA EF committee meeting in
January and share my recommendations for NAPPS.
The ABA EF committee met in San Francisco on
January 23, 2006 from 8:30 until 4:30. This meeting
was a mid-year meeting of the committee as it falls
half way between the ABA last Annual Convention
and the up-coming convention.
In attendance was the Co-Chairman of the committee
John Messing, Esq., Robert DeFilippis - OneLegal,
Jay Robbins – CSC, Brian Hickman – CT, Abs
Kotulski – CT, Jeff Karotkin – NAPPS, Dick Ford –
CT, Amy Lovell- Wells Fargo, Christopher Smith -
CA AOC, Via Conference Call from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30
p.m. were Tom Smedinghoff, Bill Baker, Rolly
Chambers, Garen Dodge, Diane Duhame, John
Gregory, & Steven Teppler.
The committee spent most of its time discussing Sec 7
Commentary of the Best Practices and revising
existing language. Revisions of other portions of the
BP were also discussed and approved. The BP as
revised at the San Francisco meeting have already
been posted on the ABA website. The Best Practices
can be found at: http://www.abanet.org/scitech/dch/BestPractices%20-%20HTML.htm
I think that it is worth noting that several sections of
the BP recognize the importance of existing law and
principles that embrace reliable proof of delivery,
proof of service/receipted transactions, and waivers of
service. It is also worth noting that these BP state
clearly that Electronic Email does not provide reliable
proof of delivery. The Best Practices are not what you
or I would have written if it were our job to do so, but
they are a lot better than what they might look like if
NAPPS were not involved in their drafting and
adoption.
The next step for the committee is drafting model
rules. That task will likely be assigned to a subcommittee
of this committee, consisting of folks that
are more technology savvy, and or engineer types. It is
our intent to continue to participate in this important
next step.
It has been one of my goals in the process to help
insure that these Best Practices have been crafted in
such a way as to allow for a technology/system/entity
that acts as the gatekeeper between the lawyer and the
entity being served. The gatekeeper’s job would be to
insure that if ESOP takes place we the process servers
might still have a roll. I submit that we can become the
gatekeeper in an electronic service of process
transaction and provide the parties, counsel and the
courts with a reliable receipted system in much the
same way we do now when serving process in the
physical world. In my opinion, we need to find a way
protect our turf and capitalize on this emerging area of
technology and the law. I think that through our
involvement on this committee, the goal I stated above
is possible.
Where does that leave process serving industry and
what opportunities exist for our members? That is not
an easy question to answer. However, I see the issue in
much the same way I see the issue facing our members
as it relates to E-Filing. I believe very few in the
industry have the desire and resources to create our
own technology solutions so that they could offer EFiling
and or ESOP. Only a very small percentage of
the members typically the larger companies will find a
way to offer E-Filing or ESOP either through a
partnership or on their own. I have a concern that
many members might not agree that they need to
embrace change in a way might seem radical. I believe
that if we are not willing to adapt we will not be able
to retain the business we have today especially if that
business includes filing court documents and serving
Registered Agents such as CT and CSC.
For those of you that are not aware, I and a few others
in California forged a relationship with LawDex and
nSite (LawDex www.lawdex.com is an E-Filing
company and nSite www.nsite.com is a Process
Automation company) for the express purpose of
finding a way the CAPPS members might be able to
offer E-Filing to their customers. The relationship has
been formalized in an agreement between the
association and the two technology companies
mentioned. One of our early goals was to be approved
as an Electronic Filing Service Provider (EFSP) in
Sacramento Superior Court. As of the writing of this
report, a CAPPS member is within days of performing
its first official E-Filing to initiate a new case in
Sacramento County. As we gain experience, we will
be approaching other jurisdictions throughout the state
to start more E-Filing projects.
The reason I bring the California experience up is that
I believe this is an example the type of action that
NAPPS or the other state associations could pursue for
the benefit of their members. I suppose it is possible
that ESOP could be part of those relationships as well.
At the last NAPPS Board Meeting in February, I
recommended that the board approve the
establishment of an E-Technology committee to
explore how NAPPS and its members might benefit
from a similar relationship with LawDex and nSite or
other technology companies. The board agreed and the
president assigned a committee to this task.
At the upcoming Annual Conference, I intend to have
educational session on technology solutions that are
available today. I will cover what CAPPS is doing in
detail and what other software vendors to the process
serving community are doing to help their clients
remain relevant.
I look forward to seeing you in Austin at the Annual
Conference. As always, I welcome your feedback and
comments.
