The Rising Costs of Litigation: Part II, Microchips and Time Delays

Microchips?

How are microchips causing prices in process serving to inflate?

This is one of those supply chain issues we’ve been hearing so much about.

To serve process, our servers have to drive. And they drive A LOT.

That means they have higher than normal maintenance on their cars.

But have you seen the price of cars lately? The shortage of microchips during the pandemic caused a huge drop in the production of new vehicles. And that caused the price of used vehicles to skyrocket, which means that people are holding on to their cars for longer, and causing an increase in demand for maintenance service.

It sounds crazy, but we’ve seen it first hand. It’s directly driving up costs, but also causing delays because servers literally have to wait longer to have their cars maintained.

Fortunately, we’ve always kept our operations lean and easily adaptable. We actually pride ourselves that we can often serve regular 48 hour subpoenas in less than 24, even without charging for a Rush Service Fee.

This may not be obvious on a micro scale. But if you’re like our high-volume clients, even a small shift in average service times can slow a lot of cases down. And that can slow down billing. It’s like firms are being attacked from both sides, seeing increases in prices, and decreases in cash flow.

Everyone is feeling the stress of inflation these days, and it’s often these less obvious, “behind-the-scenes” ways that can cause the most damage.

But with some creativity, and strong relationships with our serving team, we’ve shown that it is possible to Deflate Litigation Expenses, even when everyone else is Inflating theirs.