A very nice explainer video showing the process of serving legal documents in Australia. The process is more or less similar in most of the countries.

 

A few useful links of informative articles which will clarify some of your doubts regarding basics of process service are provided below. The links are for basic reference only as they belong to different jurisdictions:

• What is Service of Process?
• What is a Process Server?
• International Process Service

 

The Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters is generally called The Hague Convention. It applies where the documents pertaining to a Civil or Commercial matter are to be served on party to a litigation living or based in some other country which is signatory to the convention. The convention applies when both the countries i.e. where the litigation is sought or going on and where the documents need to be served, are signatories to the convention. The provisions of the convention does not apply in criminal matters and in cases in which the address of the defendant is not known. The party on whom the documents need to be served could be an individual or a corporation. Most of the countries such as USA, Canada, Russia, Australia etc. are signatories to the convention.

The convention provides various modes of serving the documents such as by postal channels, through diplomatic or consular agents, through judicial officers or other competent persons. However, the member states are free to prohibit the use of above-mentioned methods and several countries have done so. Thus, the service can be done in any of the said methods unless it is opposed by the member state. If a member state has opposed the methods mentioned above, the service of documents will have to be done through the Central Authority of the state. For example, India has specifically opposed the said methods and thus the documents cannot be served in India by any of the above-mentioned modes of service. The process service in India shall be done by means of the Central Authority.

You may have a lot of questions in mind regarding the process of Hague Convention Service. Keeping this in mind, we have answered the general questions related to the topic. Please go through the FAQs section of the website.