Locating a person of interest in the beginning of a lawsuit can be challenging. Of course, the obvious Google and Facebook search will not always yield results or the name may be too common and present you with too many results. The time it would take to narrow the search results down can be costly to a client and to be honest, can be a big waste of your time. Being a paralegal in part, means finding ways to work smarter not harder. If you are at the stage of filing a lawsuit, the client is more than likely eager to get the parties served and the case moving therefore, spending time on Google or Spokeo might not be the best use of your time.

Undoubtedly, you want to keep cost down when attempting to locate a defendant. If you are looking for a corporation, checking your state’s local secretary of state website can be very useful. Try searching based off the company name, registered agent and/or the last known address if you have one. When all else fails OR say you have located the defendant but the address comes back as no good, try hiring someone to do a skip trace. Now I know you are thinking, what is a “skip trace”. Simply put it is the process of locating a person’s whereabouts. A skip tracer is someone who performs this task, which may be the person’s primary occupation. To a degree, you are the skip tracer however, there are professional companies out there that literally dedicate their lives to finding people and have the reliable software to do it. One company I personally like to use is Absolute Attorney Services. They provide confidential searches nationwide at reasonable prices.

The benefit of having someone do a skip trace for you is that, although there may be a fee it will usually cost less then the amount of time you would end up billing the client. Drawback, depending on how quickly you want to find the person or business you may have to pay a rush fee. There is also the additional task of having to follow with the person performing the skip trace.

The feeling of finally finding a defendant that you thought had gone AWOL is so stratifying. Next time you are attempting to locate a defendant try getting someone to preform skip trace and let me know your thoughts.