In the 19th century, service of process took some doing in the United States. Pleadings were required to be served in-person and was effected, not through a cadre of bicycle messengers, but more likely by a team on horseback. In order to ease this burden, in 1862, New York enacted a law requiring any attorney wishing to litigate in New York to maintain a physical in-state address, primarily for the purpose of receiving process.
Now, process requirements have changed and service is routinely done electronically, or through one of several cost-effective mail delivery service options. With these changes, many states (including Pennsylvania and New Jersey) have abandoned in-state office requirement laws for nonresident attorneys. However, this is not the case with New York. New York’s current in-state office requirement is codified in New York Judiciary Law Section 470, which mandates that a nonresident attorney maintain an “office for the transaction of law business” within the state of New York. Recently, in Schoenefeld v. Schneiderman, Docket No. 11-4283-cv, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the rationale for New York’s in-state office requirement persists today and, therefore, a constitutional challenge to the statute was denied.
