As of January 1, 2025, electronic service of process came into effect. In practice, this means that as of that date, public administration authorities may serve correspondence in the course of proceedings to the electronic service addresses of the parties’ authorized representatives. Professional representatives are required to have such addresses and, consequently, are obligated to monitor the correspondence arriving in their inboxes. On the surface, everything seems to make sense and should work—and even streamline communication with government agencies while saving on postal costs. However, it turns out that the e-is underdeveloped and poses a real risk that correspondence sent by government agencies to the parties’ professional representatives will not reach them, which will lead to procedural chaos, legal uncertainty, and protracted proceedings. I recently experienced just such a situation. I am writing about this as a warning—on the one hand, to make professional legal representatives aware of situations that could also happen to them, and on the other hand, hoping that my voice will prompt those responsible for the operation of the e-delivery system to take the necessary steps to rectify its flaws.
The situation described took place a few weeks ago and involved a client of our law firm obtaining a permanent residence permit in Poland. As is always the case in such situations, a lawyer from our firm accompanied the client to pick up the residence card and the decision. For many years, the office had followed the practice of issuing the residence card to the foreign national during a single meeting, while issuing the written decision to the authorized representative. The practice of issuing written decisions during in-person visits was likely driven by the office’s desire to save on postage costs. However, this did not bother anyone, since, in any case, according to the regulations, the foreign national was required to personally pick up the residence card issued in his name. The decision could also be picked up at the same time.
This time, however, the official acted differently. Specifically, he refused to provide the attorney with a written copy of the decision, arguing that it had been served electronically. Days went by, and the decision still hadn’t appeared in the attorney’s inbox. Meanwhile, the office kept calling to complain about why the attorney-in-fact still hadn’t received the electronically delivered decision. Explaining to the officials that no electronic delivery had taken place was to no avail. The officials seemed to know better than anyone whether the attorney had received the electronic delivery or not. In the midst of all this, the foreign national was the most confused, receiving conflicting messages from both sides. The officials claimed that the decision had been delivered to his attorney via e-delivery, while the attorney claimed that he had not received any e-delivery from the office regarding this matter. This stalemate could likely have dragged on for a very long time had I not figured out that it was caused by the office incorrectly addressing the electronic service.
To my surprise, it turned out that the official responsible for e-deliveries must manually enter a long and easily confused sequence of digits and numbers that make up the e-delivery address every time he wants to send correspondence to the attorney in this way-delivery address generated by the system. To my surprise, the e-delivery system does not work in such a way that once an official from a given office enters the attorney’s address, it is saved, and all subsequent correspondence from that office is based on the previously saved address. It turned out that the official must re-enter this address each time, which, in my opinion, will lead to further errors in the future, causing similar problems for other authorized representatives.
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