On Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024, more than 280 legal professionals with business in Chicagoland joined InfoTrack for an informative, free webinar on the impact of the Jan. 1, 2025 update to the rules regarding original process service in Cook County.
After the presentation, InfoTrack vice president of business development Jeff Karotkin (a former president of the National Association of Professional Process Servers) fielded questions from the audience about the practical implications of this new amendment to 735 ILCS 5/2 202 Sec. 2-202. Several questions about InfoTrack ServeIT—which allows law firms to order and track process serves online through local servers—were answered by InfoTrack process serving specialist Lydia Malone.
A follow-up session on Jan. 14, 2025 was hosted by InfoTrack’s Alex Braun and featured contributions from Bob Rusch of Windy City Process Serving and Tisha Delgado, senior litigation paralegal at Masuda Funai.
Catch up on the most important callouts from these Q&A sessions below.
1. Does this new process serving law only apply to Cook County cases?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin
Yes. The new law [735 ILCS 5/2 202 Sec. 2-202] applies to any county that’s over 3 million residents. In Illinois, there’s only one. It’s Cook County. I think they have about 5.22 million residents.
None of the other collar counties have gotten to that threshold yet, so, therefore, that statute [requiring sheriff service] didn’t apply to them in the first place.
The amended statute only applies to Cook County, which means you are free to choose a private process server—or anybody who’s authorized to serve—in any Illinois county now, where you didn’t have that option in Cook County before.
2. Do you need to file a motion to skip the sheriff, or can you just go straight to the special process server?
Answered by Alex Braun
No. In most cases, i.e. unless there are special conditions imposed by the judge, you no longer need to file the motion.
Over the last few years, some Cook County divisions allowed you to go straight to a special process server as long as you had a motion approved authorizing you to do so for a certain time period. But the revised statute states “process in any county may be served without special appointment by a person who is licensed or registered as a private detective under the Private Detective, Private Alarm, Private Security, Fingerprint Vendor, and Locksmith Act of 2004 or by a registered employee of a private detective agency certified under that Act.”
Editor’s Note: Additional context and sourcing for this information was provided by attendee Tisha Delgado, senior litigation paralegal at Masuda Funai, as well as a published explanation of the new statute by Cook County Circuit Court judge E. Kenneth Wright, Jr. and Robert Markoff.
3. Where will we have to pay the $5 fee to the sheriff?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin (updated Jan. 2, 2025)
There is a new line item in the “Additional Services” or “Court Fees” section of each EFSP’s eFiling workflow titled “Summons Service Fee” when you’re filing your case. You indicate how many documents you are uploading that you need issued, and then that will drive the fee.
The fee for the existing alias summons stays the same. If you’re filing an alias summons, there’s a $6 fee for that already, plus the $5 fee that goes to the sheriff for the original summons.
4. Do I still have to pay the new summons service fee if I have a fee waiver?
Answered by Tisha Delgado, Senior Litigation Paralegal, Masuda Funai
If you have an order granting your fee waiver, then you should submit a copy of that order whenever you file something that has a fee. Or you should add a note to the clerk that the order is on file.
It’s like filing something “confidential”. You have to submit the court’s order allowing you to file it as “confidential,” a.k.a. under seal.
If you are filing something for the first time, and including a fee waiver application, then the clerk should know that they are to conditionally accept the filing.
Editor’s Note: See General Administrative Order No. 2018-06 for details.
5. Previously, private process servers did not need to be licensed private detectives. Are we still able to use a non-detective private process server?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin
Nothing changed in that regard in the statute. So, you can use anybody that you had been using who was duly authorized by statute. Which would include, detectives, process servers with what’s called a perk card, that type of thing. So as long as they’re working with or for an agency or they’re otherwise authorized under the existing statute, you can keep using them.
Editor’s Note: It may help to look at Section 2-202(a), where “persons authorized to serve process” include “a person who is licensed or registered as a private detective under the Private Detective, Private Alarm, Private Security, Fingerprint Vendor, and Locksmith Act of 2004 or by a registered employee of a private detective agency certified under that Act.”
Motion forms for appointing a server who is not licensed under this act are available here.
6. Will the special process servers know to deduct $5 from their fee? What if they don’t? Won’t they just raise their fees by $5 to counterbalance the required deduction?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin
There are two associations—a detective association and a process server association in Illinois—who have been actively communicating with the membership of their groups to let them know what they shall do. The statute says they “shall” deduct.
I can’t answer the second part, “What will they actually do?” Because we’re not them. They may or may not show that on their invoice. But, if I were them, I would.
I can’t answer what do you do if they don’t. I would imagine maybe you go, know, talk to the sheriff’s office or something. I don’t know.
It doesn’t say anything in the new statute about what happens if process servers don’t.
7. Will process servers be able to file the proof of service or proof of non-service?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin
Yes. Nothing changes there. They can file their proof for non-service declaration.
8. What guardrails, if any, have been put into place to prevent the recurrence of the problems known as “sewer service” with private servers, which led to the enactment of the law requiring the sheriff that gets the first crack at service?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin
The amended statute doesn’t speak to that issue at all. So any guardrails that exist now for private process servers, I would imagine, would continue to exist.
If, for whatever reason, there was a server who was committing acts like that, I would imagine there are criminal or civil remedies, just like there might be now.
9. If the case is in Cook County, will the $5 fee need to be paid for service in the outlying counties (ie. Lake, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, Will, etc.), or even out-of-state?
Answered by Bob Rusch, Windy City Process Serving
I spoke to the author of this bill when he wrote it.
The Cook County Clerk’s Office does not have a mechanism in place to differentiate between what summonses are being served in Cook County and what summons are being served outside of Cook County. So, unfortunately, every summons that you don’t use the sheriff for will cost you $5.
I guess the short of it is that they said, “Well, if you want to figure out a way to differentiate, then it’s gonna take a while, like everything in Cook County. So instead of that, if you want your bill passed, let’s do it. We’ll worry about [the fee issues] later.”
So, unfortunately, there is no mechanism [yet] in place to differentiate. It might cost you an extra five bucks even though it’s being served in Lake County, or any other county outside of Cook, or even out-of-state.
[This mechanism] is in the works, from what I’m told.
10. Will InfoTrack ServeIT always file a copy of the proof of service or non-service with the clerk?
Answered by Lydia Malone
That is an optional button when you’re ordering service of process through InfoTrack ServeIT. You can choose to have us file the proof of service. Generally, we don’t file proof of non-services.
If you want to explore that more with us, we can. I would say the majority of our clients don’t want us to file a proof of non-service due to the cost of the filing fee associated with that through InfoTrack.
Generally speaking, we only file the affidavits of actual service, not non-service.
11. If your first attempt at service fails, do you need to file a motion for leave to file an alias summons and appoint a special process server? Or are you able to skip that with the new statute?
Answered by Jeff Karotkin
Great question. If your first summons has run out of time, yes, you still need an order for an alias summons. So nothing changes there.
But you do not need a motion and order, or to get a standing order, to appoint a private process server.
12. Do you have to pay an additional $5 if you first attempted through the sheriff and are now utilizing a special process server?
Answered by Tisha Delgado, Senior Litigation Paralegal, Masuda Funai
The new $5 service fee is being collected for any summons being issued, including any alias summons. For an alias summons, be sure to check two boxes: the box for the alias summons fee ($6) and the box for the new “Summons Service Fee” ($5). The total charge for one alias summons will now be $11.
If you don’t pay the fee, your filing will be rejected.
Learn more about the Cook County process serving rule change
InfoTrack’s full Dec. 17 ‘Ditch the Sheriff’ webinar sheds additional detail on a number of other critical questions, including:
- What do I need to do to start ordering from a private process server after Jan. 1?
- How (and where) do I pay the required $5 fee to the Cook County Sheriff?
- How do I order online from Chicago-area process servers?
You can view a full recording of the Dec. 17 webinar, along with the slides and supplemental materials, on the ‘Ditch the Sheriff’ webinar event page. Or, visit the ‘Ditch the Sheriff Pt. II’ registration page to sign up for our follow-up webinar on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025 with Bob Rusch of Windy City Process Servers.
We’ll also be posting updates on our website as we learn more about 2025 Cook County, Illinois process serving rule change.
