What Happens When You Get Served with a Subpoena?

When people are faced with legal terms and documents getting thrown at them, the world can be a scary place. Especially if you are served with a subpoena. Here are steps and processes that you will go through if you are served with a subpoena.

First, a messenger, police officer or lawyer will hand a legal document to you, usually. Subpoenas can be for a variety of causes but no matter what the cause is for the subpoena being served to you, it means that you have to appear in court on the stated day in the legal document. If you do not appear in court on that day in the specified court house, then you will be held in contempt of court and liable to be fined or jailed which is determined by the judge's discretion.

If a police officer hands you a subpoena, it usually means that you are a key witness in a criminal trial and must appear in court. Subpoenas are also issued when a person does not want to appear in court or ha not volunteered his time in court for the case.

Subpoenas could also involve civil matters. For example, if someone such as an attorney or client does not turn over legal documents they can be issued a subpoena to appear in court and to come with those documents ready.

I strongly suggest that if you are served a subpoena, you consult an attorney right away. Make sure that you know why you have to appear in court and see if you have done anything wrong. Attorneys are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but they are well worth it because you do not want to be held in contempt of court. A judge will not care that you don't know the law because a judge expects you to consult or already have an attorney.

The subpoena is a multiple page document and in order for it to be issued, a party involved in the matter at hand must go to a judge for the cause for writing the subpoena and then have the judge sign off on it. This process takes weeks to occur.

Consulting an attorney is also important because if you have to testify according to the subpoena, you want to make sure that you don't say anything incriminating that can be used in the court of law to prosecute against you. Lawyer fees range from $250 an hour and more. In addition, the fee for an attorney to appear in court to represent you if necessary is even more money. However, as the old saying goes, "a person who represents themselves has a fool for a client."