The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the litigation process tremendously. It should come as no surprise that litigation support services have been directly impacted as well, thanks in large part to restrictive statewide ordinances. However, if your litigation support provider has been unable to compensate to this new environment by adapting their standard operating practices, it may be time to consider another provider.
As you may already know, many of the California Superior Courts are closed to the public, and the ones that remain open have done so by heavily restricting access. As you can imagine, this has made submitting court filings (specifically to courts that do not have eFiling) a lengthy process fraught with potential complications. Your legal support provider should be accounting for this by keeping you up to date on the status of the court and routinely providing you realistic timelines as to when you can expect your filing to be conformed. More importantly, your provider should be consistently checking on the status of your filings to ensure that they have not been lost or incorrectly dated. The last thing you want is court ordered sanctions for missing deadlines because of the court’s mistake.
Process serving orders present their own set of challenges, as many business are either working from home or open with limited hours of operation. Your process server should be checking on the status of these businesses beforehand rather than blindly attempting service at bad addresses, running up your bill in the process.
Now more than ever, customer service should be central to the legal support industry. If you find yourself questioning whether or not your support provider has been taking these extra steps for you, it might be time for a change. Call Legal Document Server today at (800) 687-5003 or visit our website (www.legaldocumentserver.com) to learn more about our on-demand litigation support services and how we’ve been going the extra mile to keep our customers litigating through this crisis. When you sign-up, we provide complimentary concierge services to help streamline all your on-demand needs and our support staff will consistently track and provide status updates for your orders, ensuring you’re never left in the dark.
Litigation is an ever-evolving practice, and the COVID-19 pandemic has really shaken things up. If we learn anything from this year, it should be that the legal industry needs to integrate technology more than ever in order to navigate our rapidly, ever-changing environment.
