Since the beginning, the primary purpose of this blog has been to educate the practicing bar on the practical application of the Hague Service Convention. While we’re happy to give away the recipe to the Special Sauce (there’s no secret about this stuff, really), we’ve been lucky to have a whole bunch of great people trust us to handle their Hague Service Requests from start to finish. Many of them find us through the Hague Law Blog, the readers of which usually fall into one of three categories:
- Academics/students researching practical procedural matters,
- Do-It-Yourself-ers who need to serve defendants located abroad, and
- Clients of Viking Advocates (or those who are about to be our clients).
I have argued, also since the beginning, that a DIY approach to Hague Service is risky and potentially far more costly than it might seem, so today we’ve got some exciting news for the folks in the second category: you’re no longer on your own.
We’re excited to announce the launch of HAGUE ENVOY, a new platform designed for practitioners who still want to handle their own Hague Service Requests, but who don’t have the time to research all of the ins & outs of the Convention.
We’ve already done the research and pulled multiple countries together in a single application, and we’ve lived in the treaty for years, so the ins & outs aren’t new to us. The result: lawyers and court officials can now focus on the substantive matters in a case rather than procedural hurdles.
It’s as simple as we can make it. Pop into the platform and pay the fee, answer a battery of questions, and in ten or twenty minutes, you have a completed request form (or forms… it’ll handle multiple defendants in multiple countries). We’ll also provide guidance on what to do with the form in a specific, step-by-step format.
And along the way, if we spot a quicker and easier avenue to go down, we’ll let you know.
To be sure, Viking Advocates is still here for you, but if you definitely want to handle things on your own, Hague Envoy can be a handy tool for your workbench.
(My contact info is in the upper right ↗↗↗ if you’re on a desktop. It’s down below ↓↓↓ if you’re on a phone or tablet. Just sayin’.)