Jay S. Jump, a longtime member of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA), and his wife Kathryn Jump, started www.certificateofservice.com in 2005. This year, NACBA made the upstart mailing service a member benefit. NACBA’s executive director, Dan LaBert sat down with Jay and Kathryn this past month to learn more about this member benefit.
Dan Labert: I guess the first question has to be “What is www.certificateofservice.com?”
Jay S. Jump: www.certificateofservice.com, or COS as it is commonly known on the listserv, is simply a mailing service for bankruptcy attorneys, bankruptcy trustees, and their support staff. To put it simply, we stuff envelopes for a living. The theory is simple, but the logistics are much more involved than that. Here is how it works: An attorney uploads their documents to CM/ECF Pacer, say for example, a motion to amend a Chapter 13 plan. As soon as they have finished doing that, they go to our website, or in this case, the NACBA website, to upload those same .pdf documents for mailing to the full ECF Creditor Matrix. We receive the documents that they send to us through the website. In addition to the documents, the NACBA member fills out a brief form giving us the case information that we need.
Once we have received the upload in our offices, we process the job for printing and stuffing. The .pdf documents are printed on our high speed printers and we retrieve the creditor matrix mailing list from the Court district where the case was filed. Those addresses are then downloaded by our database and we print the envelopes with the NACBA members return address. The documents are stuffed in the envelopes, run through our postal sorter and dropped for delivery into the mail.
Once the job is ready for distribution to the post office, we also create a ‘certificate of service’ or ‘proof of service’ that shows the Court and any interested party that the documents have been served and mailed first class. Easy Right?
Kathryn Jump: Not so much, no. We just make it look easy!
Dan LaBert: How many envelopes do you stuff per day?
Kathryn Jump: Right now, we are averaging 14,000 pieces of mail per day. We drop more mail into the USPS system everyday than most cities do in a month.
Dan LaBert: I know Jay has been involved with NACBA for a long time as a bankruptcy attorney, how did you come up with idea for www.certificateofservice.com?
Kathryn Jump: Jay and I worked together for many years in his office and his 13 practice had grown quite a bit. This meant there were a lot of motions to be filed, a lot of claims objections to make, and of course, plans had to be amended and modified. At the height of his practice, I would say we were mailing out well over 300 envelopes a day. If a case had a large creditor list, we could be there until late into the evening stuffing envelopes.
17
Member Benefits
Featured Member Benefit: