Our work in Los Angeles County comes in three kinds: serving a summons or subpoena, filing papers with the court and pulling records from a courthouse. All three go through one Service Request. We coordinate Los Angeles assignments from Sacramento through our statewide network of experienced process servers and court runners, and you keep one point of contact the whole way through.
Finding the right Los Angeles courthouse
The Los Angeles Superior Court is divided into 12 districts (Local Rule 2.2), and where a case is filed depends on its type and the ZIP Code that sets venue. The court's directory lists 36 courthouses. Run the case address through its Filing Court Locator before you file.
Downtown, the Stanley Mosk Courthouse on North Hill Street takes limited and unlimited civil, small claims, unlawful detainer, family, probate, restraining orders, child support and appeals. Under Local Rule 2.3, limited civil cases other than collections and unlawful detainer go to the Central District there, and so does most probate. Regional courthouses in Long Beach, Lancaster, Pasadena, Van Nuys, Chatsworth, Compton, Norwalk and Torrance each take their own mix.
Small claims has its own map. The locator currently sends small claims to Stanley Mosk, Beverly Hills, Bellflower, Chatsworth, Compton, Long Beach (Governor George Deukmejian), Inglewood, Antelope Valley, Pasadena, Van Nuys East and West Covina, with Catalina for Avalon. Beverly Hills, not Santa Monica, serves the West District, and Bellflower has replaced Downey.
Clerk hours are 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. on weekdays, except court holidays. Of the 36 courthouses, 15 hear only criminal, traffic, juvenile or mental health matters. East Los Angeles is now a juvenile courthouse. Source: the court's courthouse directory and Filing Court Locator, checked October 28, 2026.
When you send a filing or a records pull, name the courthouse and the department if you know it.
Do attorneys have to e-file in Los Angeles Superior Court?
Attorneys in Los Angeles civil cases have to file electronically. Local Rule 3.4(a), amended effective January 1, 2026, requires litigants represented by attorneys to e-file all documents in all civil case types through an approved provider unless the court exempts them. The mandate began with limited civil on December 3, 2018 and non-complex unlimited civil on January 2, 2019. Self-represented litigants may e-file but don't have to. Source: the court's civil e-filing page, checked October 28, 2026.
Family law and probate e-filing are also mandatory for represented litigants. In small claims, e-filing is optional for self-represented parties, and attorneys must e-file in post-judgment matters.
Our Court Filings service covers both routes: eFiling, or a court runner at the counter when a paper filing is allowed or needed. Give us the courthouse, the case number and any deadline with the documents.
Serving papers across a county of 10 million
The 2020 Census counted 10,014,009 people in Los Angeles County, and the Census Bureau puts it at 9,694,934 as of July 1, 2025. The city of Los Angeles alone had 3,898,747 residents in 2020, followed by Long Beach, Santa Clarita and Glendale. A single assignment can mean a downtown office tower in the morning and a high desert address in the afternoon.
The far ends need planning. Lancaster and Palmdale anchor the Antelope Valley north of the San Gabriel Mountains, and smaller places like Lake Hughes (544 residents in 2020) sit farther out. Avalon is on Santa Catalina Island, about 405 miles straight-line from our office. Remote areas are subject to different timelines, so call us before choosing Rush for one of those addresses.
In the dense parts of the county, the details on your request decide how fast an attempt succeeds. Put these in the Letter of Instruction:
- the unit, suite or floor number
- gate, lobby or call-box instructions
- the days and hours the person is usually there
- a workplace or second address, if you have one
- a photo or description, if you have one
Sending a Los Angeles County request
Start a Service Request and upload up to 5 PDFs, or email them to Service@ValproAttorneyServices.com. Name who to serve, list every address you have and pick Rush or Standard. Each request gets a confirmation email, and every update comes in that thread.
If a weekday reply doesn't reach you within 5–10 minutes between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m., phone 855-582-5776 or write to the same email address. If an address goes stale, skip tracing looks for a current one before the next attempt.
Serving a corporation, LLC or partnership with a Los Angeles headquarters starts with its agent for service of process. Our serving corporations guide covers the lookup and the fallback methods.
The county register goes public in 2027
From January 1, 2027, each county clerk must keep a publicly available register of process servers (Business and Professions Code § 22355(a), as amended by AB 747). That makes it easier to check a registration number listed on a Los Angeles proof of service. Our AB 747 guide covers the other changes. General information only, not legal advice.