The Wall Street Journal August 31, 1995 By Wendy Brandes
Excerpts-Serving Subpoenas with a Smile and an unusually dramatic flair.
Irving Botwinick has learned that not everyone appreciates good service. That's because the owner of a New York company called Serving by Irving makes it his business to get subpoenas into the hands of reluctant recipients. Not only do Mr. Botwinick's employees deliver the documents, they document the deliveries, snapping photos of people holding their papers. The evidence of jobs properly done is meant to counter recipients' claims of not having received a subpoena.
Mr. Botwinick estimates that 40% of his cases involve "avoiders", but his motto is, "if they're alive, we'll serve them; if they're dead, we'll tell you where they're buried."
This devotion costs attorneys with papers to serve a minimum of $75.00 an hour. That adds up to revenue of $1 million a year, Mr. Botwinick says. Business has been so good, in fact, he plans to advertise on Court TV this fall. One ad will re-enact a particularly proud moment; the time an employee submitted to a full medical examination in order to serve papers to an elusive doctor.
Modern Maturity July/August 1996 By Mark Wexler
Service with a smile
Sitting hospital gowned on the examining table, the young woman looked no different from any other patient the New York City obstetrician had seen that day. But as the doctor introduced himself, she had a surprise for him. From beneath her bare behind, the patient pulled out some legal papers and handed the doctor a summons. Gotcha !
"He was being sued for malpractice and had successfully avoided other process servers for weeks," says Irving Botwinick. " So the attorneys working on the case came to me for help." Botwinick is known in New York City as the man to turn to when all else fails. As owner of a company called Serving By Irving, he gets legal documents into the hands of the most reluctant recipients. Botwinick sometimes hires unemployed actors to serve papers. "We take a creative approach to our work, and that mean hiring creative people," he says.
One serving by Irving licensed server posed as an autograph-seeker at the New York Mets' Shea Stadium to serve divorce papers to a pitcher on a visiting team. " He not only served the court order, he also got the guys autograph," says Botwinick. For those who would hide from him, Botwinick has one piece of advice: "If you're going to hide, you'd better hide well," he says. "I get paid by the hour."
The New York Times June 28, 2000 By Ellen Rapp
Chasing Trump Or the Pink Dog Of Patience
I used to manage a law firm. They were sending work to servers who were so inept - one literally couldn't find the Empire State Building. I said to a lawyer: "This is a joke. Let me get my license and I'll serve those papers for you." In 1977, Serving by Irving was born.
Lawyers love us. They know that if a case is ever haunting them years later, they can come back to the same reliable servers that were here before. My guys have done everything - served celebrities, had their lives threatened. One of my guys, Big Bob, once served a guy on a nude beach. The slogan I coined for the company is: "If they're alive, we'll serve them. If they're dead, we'll tell you where they're buried."
I don't serve papers myself anymore, but I used to have fun doing it. Another guy and I once had to serve Donald Trump's bodyguards for a divorce deposition. We ran down the street to this tuxedo place at 4 p.m., then showed up at a party at the Plaza. Ivana got us on the list. We hung out having hors d'oeuvres, caviar until Trump and his bodyguards came in. Our people have served Donald Trump many times.
We don't have voicemail and never will. You call this office and you get a human being. If a lawyer is on trial, he doesn't want to have to start pushing buttons. He wants me, he gets me. Now I have walkie-talkies, so we can get answers to the lawyers much faster. We work with a lot of huge corporate law firms and even if they have four months to serve a client, they want it done this afternoon. They don't care about cost.
You can't always do it as fast as a lawyer wants. I'll say, "Sir, we can't just bust this guy's door down - he's not under arrest." We have to hide under a tree, stake him out, whatever. And sometimes a guy just disappears. If I can't find him, nobody can.
Now I have a staff of 20, including 15 process servers. Some have been with me 15 years or more, Bob was with me from the beginning - 23 years. Process serving is usually a transient position. But our servers make this their career. Bob now has a house, two cars, a boat, but when he met me he was living in a basement in Brooklyn.
I look for people who are creative, street-smart. People who can lie well, but are also honest. They also have to have a lot of patience. We often have to do stakeouts. You can spend hours outside a house, waiting for the lady with the pink dog to come out.
We don't want people who have done this work before. We want to train them our way. One woman who works for me is a professional singer; one guy used to be a doorman. My P.R. firm has been working on some new ads for The New York Law Journal. I'll go around with a photographer and he'll get me in all kinds of scenes. Dressed as a Hasidic Jew on the Lower East Side. In Central Park with a horse and buggy. Outside a hospital serving doctors. Lawyers love my ads.
I once tried to set up a franchise with offices in D.C., Westchester, Philly, New Jersey. It didn't work out, though. I could pay people to teach this stuff, but they're not me. No one can really do what I do.
I'm getting a private investigator license soon, so we'll be expanding to do investigation as well. It'll triple our revenues. We've worked with a lot of the same firms from the beginning. We've also seen law firms come and go. I'm still here. One lawyer said to me once, "Irving, you still answer the phone!" I said, "Yeah, That's what I do."
