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A process agent for an English law agreement is a business located England or Wales (or, in theory, their adjacent territorial waters) which accepts service of legal proceedings filed in English courts on behalf of a person who has no permanent place of business in England or Wales.
The rules of English civil court procedure require notice of legal proceedings (called “process”) before an English (or Welsh) court to be physically served on the defendant in England or Wales (or, at the limit, in their adjacent territorial waters[1]. Service in Scotland — or its territorial waters — will not do. This means you can serve process on someone rowing a boat in the Bristol Channel, but not in Glasgow.
This means if you have a contract with a counterparty who has no place of business in England or Wales (or their territorial waters), it will need to appoint a process agent on whom you can serve court papers should, heaven forfend, you need to.
- ↑ In the Civil Procedure Rules the jurisdiction is defined as “unless the context requires otherwise, England and Wales and any part of the territorial waters of the United Kingdom adjoining England and Wales”, so therefore the UK’s territorial waters adjoining Scotland or Northern Ireland are out of bounds.