Cherry. Nothing else comes close to such awesomeness.  Maybe Lime in a pinch.

Back in law school, I was always befuddled by those gunner types who insisted that no legal argument could be made without a case citation. The professor would ask a question and these guys (I use that in the non-gender-exclusive sense) would go thumbing through their casebooks and brief notes to find just the right response, because they’d swallowed too much law review Kool-Aid.

Meanwhile, we of the nuts & bolts persuasion (read: 50th percentile performers) would pull up a browser page and have an answer from Google far more quickly. Continue Reading Yes, counsel, you can use Google as a *starting* point. Wikipedia, too.

The Peace Palace, Den Haag.

(See Part One here and Part Two here.  Both discuss parts of FRCP 4, while this one hits on the Hague Service Convention itself.)

One day toward the end of my 2L year, this wisdom came from one of my mentors, a retired Army JAG officer who had more than his share of trial experience in military and civilian courts:

Lawyers are the most helpless race of people on the planet.

Continue Reading Keep reading, Part Three.

It’s official– yesterday we signed on to the Convention of 2 July 2019 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters, colloquially known as the Hague Judgments Convention.* Continue Reading The United States Signs the Hague Judgments Convention

L. Leonard Ruben District Court Building, Silver Spring, Md.  Farragutful, via Wikimedia Commons.

[Update, August 2025:  Michigan is a special situation, outlined here.]

A while back, I wrote that removing the self-expiration language in a standard bankruptcy summons is imperative when serving overseas defendants in adversary proceedings.  I’ve used that post on several occasions to advise litigators in various state venues to do likewise, where the documents contain text like “This summons is effective for service only if served within 30 days after the date it  is issued.”

The same basic logic applies:

If the summons expires by its own terms before we can reasonably expect a foreign authority to get the thing served, we’re wasting everybody’s time– especially the clerk’s office.

Continue Reading Modify State Court Summons Deadlines. Just do it.

Flag of Portugal at the Castelo de São Jorge in Lisbon. Berthold Werner via Wikimedia Commons.

Portugal is erroneously considered the “little brother” of the bigger country next to it on the Iberian Peninsula.    It has its own culture, its own language, and one heck of a lot more progressive recent history than its neighbor-who-shall-not-be-named.*  At one time, it was a global colonial power, and it counts some of the 16th century’s greatest explorers among its sons.   Pertinent to litigators today, serving process in Portugal is subject to the strictures of the Hague Service Convention, regardless of which U.S. or Canadian venue is hearing the matter.  Continue Reading How to Serve Process in Portugal

Ah, Umbria in the fall.

Because of this blog, I get a significant number of calls and emails from pro se litigants, with varying sorts of questions.  Ordinarily, I tell them I can’t advise them directly, but if they’ll have their lawyer call me, I’d be happy to help.  Some reply with thanks and a simple “thanks, Aaron, I’ll do that.”

Others reply with an expletive-riddled rant that lawyers are leeches draining the financial life out of hardworking people and why don’t we just all walk off a cliff somewhere.  I don’t mind telling them to go away.

But there’s a third type of response that bothers me greatly (saddens me, really) because it’s so unnecessary.  One such inquiry pinged in this morning, just as I was brushing my teeth.  Continue Reading Take the case– and let us worry about treaty requirements.

What? Atticus Finch was also a whaling ship captain?

[Update: April 22, 2022:  Aaaaand then he takes the opposite view, getting it wrong.  See my new rant way down at the bottom.] Continue Reading Judge Albright gets the Hague “alternative” question right, and so do others.