Court Procedures / Evidence / Service

Although I can’t speak to your state in particular, generally, there are two types of subpoenas: a subpoena duces tecum, which is a subpoena for documents (such as hospital records, police reports, etc.) and a subpoena ad testificandum, which is a subpoena for someone’s testimony. (These are Latin words and a bit hard to spell and pronounce.) These names may be different in your state but there will likely be 2 separate subpoenas – one for documents and one for testimony. If you think you need one of these for your case, the clerk’s office may have blank subpoenas that you can fill out and ask the judge to sign. The actual process for getting it signed may be different in each court so you may want to ask the clerk for the procedure in your court. For example, the clerk may tell you that you can go to the courtroom on any day and approach the judge’s clerk or court secretary and hand him/her the subpoenas and wait for them to be signed. Or, you may have to wait until your next court date when your case is scheduled and ask the judge at that time. If you want to call the court ahead of time to find out the exact procedure, you can find contact information for courthouses in your state on our website. [HYPERLINK]

If the judge does sign the subpoena, you may need to find out from the judge or clerk how the subpoenas have to be served on those people - often times, it has to personally be handed to the person by someone other than you (this is called “personal service”) or perhaps it can be mailed - but I can’t say either way how it would happen in your case. Generally, the person who served it would have to fill out an “affidavit of service,” get the affidavit notarized and you may have to file it in court or bring it with you on your next court date - you may want to ask the court clerk, judge or an attorney in STATE for more info on the requirements for the affidavit of service. You can find free and low cost lawyers in your state on our Finding a Lawyer page. [HYPERLINK]