Practice Management

Lyndon Johnson use to pound on his desk and exclaim, "I hate war"!  Well, I am here to tell you that this Texan hates mail.  Apart from the fact that I have become good friends with many of the postal workers over the years, I do not like going to the post office.  I have tried to eliminate mail as much as possible, and I have done a pretty good job.

One big stumbling block has been that I file federal adversary proceedings.  Service of these complaints, summons, notice of filing and scheduling orders issued need to be served in most instances via certified mail.  I guess you could drop the pleadings in the regular mail, but you just try getting a default judgment when no answer is filed if you do not have some type of return receipt or delivery conformation.  These certified mail packages are typically 25 to 30 pages.

The problem is that it is hard to achieve a purely paperless office when you are having to print, fold, stuff, fill out certified mail certificates, take all of this to the post office, and mail them.  It is also time consuming and expensive.  The manpower involved really adds up after a while.

A number of companies have sprung up to handle this online over the years.  At one point the USPS even tried to offer the service and failed to attract enough users.  Besides, their services were difficult to use and expensive.  As a result they failed.

The last few months I have been using OnlineCertifiedMail.Com. This company has been catering to HOA and other services that have to send out many identical certified letters.  Like most services in the past, the company did not cater to one shot certified mail pieces (especially lengthy or bulky certified mail pieces) like my law firm produces.  I contacted the company, however, and it agreed to accommodate my needs in the short term by me sending it the documents and information that I needed served by email and then it would place the information in its system and send out the certified mail.  In the interim they were working on a link on their site to allow anybody to easily set up an account and send certified mail one letter or pleading at a time.

Its new service is extremely easy to use. Go to OnlineCertifiedMail.Com and click on the "start a job" link if this is your first time.  In a few easy steps the process is completed and you have your tracking number.  On my first try I completed the task in about two minutes.

USPS now allows online certified mail receipts.  That is how Online Certified Mail sends your package.  The Postal Service delivers the package, obtains a signature, scans it, and then it is made available to you online.  You can check on the status of delivery at Online Certified Mail or you can do so on the USPS website, which I like to do because it shows me the status of things even if the mail has yet to be delivered.  Of course, you can save the signature and tracking information in PDF on your computer and upload it to the Court with your Certificate of Service.

I prepare the pleading packages for service using Acrobat Professional which allows you to create or attach diverse documents into one document.  I have the pleading in PDF because I uploaded it to the Court.  The Court provides me a notice that it has been filed, which I save and convert into a PDF.  The Court later provides me a summons online and in PDF, which I save.  Most courts will also issue some type of pretrial order they wish to be served with the pleadings.  This comes to me online and in PDF, which I save.  When I have possession of all of the PDF documents on my computer, I place all of the documents together, starting with the summons, into one document, which I upload to Online Certified Mail.

I never leave my desk and I never create any actual paper.  The one exception is in sending copies to the client, as well as sending retainer agreements and the like, which I need to be returned.  Many or most clients now have email and can receive PDF documents.  Some do not and I must print and mail these the old fashion way.

There are relatively cheap services for receiving and converting your mail into PDF documents such as Earth Class Mail. However, I now only wish that there was a reasonably priced one shot regular mail service, which would allow you to upload a letter you want to send and mail it for you.  The USPS can do this for you, but they have a minimum charge that must makes a one shot letter simply impractical.