Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So I want to start today by looking at the invisible friction in the legal system.
You know, we usually talk about the high level stuff.
Supreme Court rulings, passive settlements, all the drama inside the courtroom.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: The big headlines.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Exactly. But if you actually dig into how a lawsuit moves from point A to point B, you realize the whole thing is, well, it's surprisingly fragile. It doesn't run on fiber optics.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: No. It runs on gravel roads. It's the last mile problem. But. But the stakes are so much higher than a late Amazon package.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: That's a great way to put it.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: I mean, if a defendant doesn't get that stack of papers physically put in their hand, due process just, it doesn't happen. The judge can't rule. The case is dead in the water.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: And that is exactly what we're unpacking today. We're looking at process service, but through a really specific localized lens.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: We have a stack of data and transcripts from a company called Lafayette Process Servers, LLC, and they cover the 15th Judicial District Court in Louisiana.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: And a lot of this comes from their host, Scott Frank, and his podcast Paper Trails.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Which is just a gold mine for understanding the difference between theory and practice.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Because in theory, serving legal papers is just logistics. You're just moving paper, simple. In practice, especially in a place like Acadia Parish, which is our focus today, it's this mix of, like, detective work, cultural anthropology and off road driving.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: We're talking about Crowley, Louisiana, the rice capital and the little towns around it like Rain and Church Point.
And the real tension here, it seems to me, is between the national algorithm and local reality.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: That's the perfect way to frame it.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: But let me, let me play devil's advocate for a second before we live in a world where I can pin a location on a map in the middle of the Sahara and a satellite sees it. So why is local knowledge still a thing? Why can't a big national logistics company just plug an address into a route optimizer and get this done?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Because the map is often lying to you, or at least it's not telling you the whole truth. Let's look at what the sources call the remote misconception.
Scott Frank talks a lot about how these national aggregators, these big legal support firms in New York or Chicago, they look at Crowley, Louisiana on a map and they see a black hole.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: They see it as non serviceable or.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Something, or extreme rural.
They see low population density and they assume it's like an expedition. They think it requires special handling or it's just too far to Be profitable for a standard run.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: But that's not the reality.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Not at all. If you talk to the team at Lafayette process servers, Crowley is 20 minutes down I10 from their main office in Cairn Crow. It's their backyard.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: So it's a perception gap.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: It's a data gap.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: The national firm is using generalized demographic data. They see rural, so they hire some random gig worker. Or they just mail it to the sheriff.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: The local expert. They see a commuter corridor, but the problem gets much worse when you actually try to find the front door.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Okay, so this brings us to the Rice Capital reality. The sources spend a lot of time on the rice mills, and this is where I want to push back on the idea that this is just driving.
If you have an address for a guy working at a mill and you have gps, why is that so hard? You just drive to the pen, you walk in, you hand him the papers. Done.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Oh, if only.
Try doing that at a rice mill during harvest season.
First of all, the address on the paperwork. It's usually the corporate office or just the main gate. The facility itself could be massive. Hundreds of acres, silos, dryers, loading docks. So you ask security, if there even is security. They're not going to let a process server just wander around the floor.
But more likely, you're dealing with a shift worker. Okay, so if you show up at 2pm because that's when your route optimizer told you to be there, you're hitting a dead zone. The guy is like three stories up in a dryer, or he's driving a loader in a field two miles away. You can't get to him.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: So the efficiency of the algorithm actually guarantees failure here, 100%.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: The local expert knows the shift changes. They know that the shift breaks at 6am or 6pm they know the specific gate where the workers punch out. You don't chase the guy. You wait for the workflow to bring him to you.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: That's not on Google Maps.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Not a chance.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: That is institutional knowledge of the local economy.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: It sounds like hunting.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: It is hunting. That's exactly what it is. And it's the same with the geography of the towns themselves. You take a place like Church Point or Iota. The sources mention these are rural routes.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Which usually means P.O. boxes.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Right, right. And here's where the tech just breaks down again.
In a lot of these rural systems, the mailing address is a PO Box, but the legal system requires domiciliary service. You have to serve them at their home.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: You can't serve a P.O.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Box. You can't serve a box. So if you run a skip trace on some national database, it often just defaults to that mailing address.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: So the national provider sends a driver to the post office.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: It happens all the time. They drive to the zip code, find a wall of metal boxes, and then they realize they're stuck. A local specialist knows that Route 2, Box 45, actually corresponds to a physical house down a specific gravel road that might not even have a street sign.
They know how to convert that rural route into a GPS coordinate because they've been there a hundred times.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: But wait, hasn't 911 mapping improved this? I thought most counties have forced physical addresses now.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: They have, but the adoption by the residents can be slow. A defendant might still use the old rural route description on their credit card application or utility bills. Just because, you know, you know, that's where I live.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: So the database just scrapes that old data.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Exactly. And if you don't have a human eye on the ground to say, no, no, that house is actually over here. You're just chasing ghosts.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Let's pivot to the court system itself. The sources are very specific. That Lafayette process servers are 15th JDC specialists, and Acadia Parish is part of that district. Why does that matter so much? A court is a court. You file papers at the clerk's office. Is it really that different from parish to parish?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: It's wildly different. Every clerk of court is essentially its own independent fiefdom. Oh, yeah. They have their own software, their own filing fees, their own unwritten rules about how they accept documents.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Unwritten rules?
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. The source material mentions walkthroughs. This is a critical piece of the logistics.
Let's say you have a temporary restraining order, a tro. It needs to be signed by a judge now so it can be served tonight. You can't just e file that and wait three days.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: You have to physically walk it into the courthouse.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: You have to know where to walk.
You have to know which judge is on duty that day, which specific clerk handles the immediate signings. And frankly, you need to have a relationship with them so they don't just wave you to the back of the line.
Scott Frank's team emphasizes this again and again. They aren't just dropping papers off. They are navigating the bureaucracy to get the signature that actually triggers the service.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: And that connects to the Rush versus Bash issue. I was reading through the material on this, and the economic difference is just stark.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: It's the difference between a taxi and a bus.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Right. The national aggregators, they Operate on a batch model. So explain how that screws over someone in Crowley.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Well, just think about the economics for the national firm. They charge a flat low rate to make any money. They cannot send one driver to Crowley for one paper.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Too much in gas and time.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Way too much. So they hold the paper.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: They wait until the bus is full.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Exactly. They wait until they have, say, 10 papers for Acadia Parish. And that might take a week. If you're a client waiting on a child custody ruling or a protective order, you're sitting in limbo because you're logistics provider trying to save a few bucks on gas.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Whereas the Acadia route that's mentioned in.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: The podcast that runs daily because Lafayette Process servers has the volume and the local density, they're going to Crowley anyway. They don't have to wait for the batch to fill up. They can take a single rush paper, drive 20 minutes down i10 and attempt it that afternoon.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: So the density of their local business solves the whole latency problem.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: It's the whole game.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: It's interesting how that one word density just changes the entire value proposition. But I want to go back to this idea of the evasive defendant. We've talked about finding the house, but what about when the person just doesn't want to be found?
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Which is, you know.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Pretty often the sources talk about skip tracing, and I always picture this as, like, hacking some guy in a hoodie breaking into a mainframe. But in reality, it's. It's just buying data, isn't it? Anyone can buy a background check online.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Anyone can buy bad data online. That's the key distinction the sources mention. They access investigator grade databases, credit headers, utility hookups, license plate reader data. Stuff you can't get with a simple Google search. But even that's not a magic bullet.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Why not? If I have your credit header, I have your address.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: You have the address you used when you applied for the credit card or the address where the bill goes. You don't necessarily have the address where you're sleeping tonight. Okay, and this is where that boots on the ground verification comes in.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: The physical check.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
Data is historical, reality is real time. A database might say, John smith lives at 123 Main St.
A process server drives by and sees the grass is four feet high, the windows are boarded up, and there's a condemned notice on the door.
The database is wrong.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Or conversely, the database says he lives in Texas, but the process server sees his pickup truck parked at his girlfriend's house over in Rain.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Exactly. And the source material brings up A great point here about local networking. And in a town like Rain or Crowley, people talk.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: If a strange car drives down a dead end road three times, the neighbors notice. A local process server knows how to talk to those neighbors without setting off alarm bells. They can tell the difference between he moved out and he's hiding in the back.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: That feels like a fine line though. I mean, you're essentially stalking people. Legally you are.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: And that is exactly why the sources emphasize credibility and authority so heavily.
This is not a job for some random gig worker in a beat up car.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: I noticed that the list of memberships, the BBB, the Chambers of Commerce, the National Association, NMPs.
Is that just resume padding or does it actually change how the job gets done?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: It changes everything. Safety, success rates. Imagine you're on a rural property in Louisiana, everyone has a gun, and you're walking up to a stranger's house to give them what is probably bad news, Right? If you look like just some random guy in a T shirt, you might get run off or worse.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: So the badge matters, the professionalism matters.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: It's everything. Scott Frank sits on the board of directors for the Better Business Bureau. That sends a signal to the community and even to local law enforcement that this is a legitimate professional operation.
So if the police get a call about a suspicious vehicle and it turns out to be a known board certified process server, the whole situation just de escalates immediately.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: And the Chamber memberships? One Acadiana Youngsville, Baton Rouge. That seems like building an ecosystem.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: It is. It's about being embedded in the business fabric of the community. If you're trying to serve a garnishment on an employee, you have to deal with the employer. If that business owner knows you from a Chamber meeting, they are far more likely to cooperate than if you're just some voice on the phone demanding access to their people.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: It effectively removes that outsider friction.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Precisely. It turns a potential confrontation into a simple transaction.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: I want to touch on the legal disclaimer that was just plastered all over the source material. It felt aggressive. We are not attorneys. We do not give legal advice.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: It has to be. It has to be aggressive. This is the unauthorized practice of law. Boundary the upl. It's a huge deal.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: But isn't it helpful to tell a confused person what the papers they're holding actually mean?
[00:11:40] Speaker B: It's helpful and it's illegal. And it creates a liability nightmare. If a process server says, oh, don't worry, you just need to show up on Tuesday and and they're wrong about the date. Or the courtroom. The case can be thrown out or the server themselves can get sued.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: So they have to be robots in that moment.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: They have to be couriers. The source uses the term legal logistics, and I think that's brilliant. Yeah, they handle the mechanics, the truck, the road, the handoff. They do not handle the legal strategy. And maintaining that firewall is actually the sign of a truly professional operation. The amateur tries to be helpful and ends up ruining the case. The professional delivers the paper and walks away.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: There's one more piece of logistics I want to ask about. The non est or the failure to serve. Because sometimes you just can't find the person, right?
[00:12:25] Speaker B: It happens.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: The sources mention providing due diligence affidavits. Why spend so much time documenting a failure?
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Because in the eyes of the court, a documented failure is almost as valuable as a success.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: How so?
[00:12:38] Speaker B: If you can prove to the judge that you tried with dates, times, GPS coordinates, photos of the empty house, statements from neighbors, the judge can then allow the plaintiff to move forward using alternative.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Methods like appointing a curator or serving by publication.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Exactly. But you only get that permission if your due diligence is bulletproof. If you just write couldn't find them on a napkin, the judge will laugh you out of court. This is another area where the local expert really earns their fee. They aren't just paid to deliver. They're paid to generate evidence of every attempt.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: So, bringing this all back to the beginning, we have this view of the legal system as this, you know, abstract, lofty thing, but in reality, in places like Acadia Parish, it's muddy boots and knowing the shift schedule at a rice mill.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: It is. And it's a powerful reminder that we haven't automated trust yet. We haven't automated local knowledge. You can build the best routing algorithm in the world, but it doesn't know that the bridge on County Road 4 is out or that the defendant always parks his truck behind the barn, not in the driveway.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: That man versus algorithm theme really holds up through all this. The national companies see a map, the local companies see a territory.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: And the territory always wins if you don't respect the local nuance. The gravel, the shift work, the culture, the whole legal system just grinds to a halt. The paper doesn't get delivered, and justice doesn't happen.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: It really makes you wonder, as we try to scale everything up to this national automated level, what else are we breaking? What other critical systems depend entirely on a guy knowing a guy or knowing a back road that we're trying to replace with an app?
[00:14:13] Speaker B: That's the scary part, isn't it? Yeah, we usually don't find out until the system actually crashes.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Well, next time you see a car pulling down a long gravel driveway in Crowley, maybe give them a little respect. They might just be the only thing keeping the gears of justice turning.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to this deep dive.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: See you next time.
