Let’s go back to 1990. You wake up and make your way to the front porch where the daily newspaper is waiting for you. As you drink your morning cup of coffee, you scan the top news of the day, and happen to stumble across legal notices.
Fast-forward. It’s 2021. You wake up, reach for your phone and go to online news platforms or social media for your daily dose of news. Any information you want is right at your fingertips. While convenient, it becomes harder to gather a wide variety of news and information, such as legal notices, unless specifically searching for them.
But how many of us wake up and search “legal notices”?
In addition to being a piece of information intended to reach a large group of people, a legal notice must also be accessible, archivable and verifiable. These three things would not be obtainable if legal notices are only housed online.
Given our high dependency on technology, it is easy to forget that there are people who lack access to the internet. Especially when giving notice in foreign countries, it is important to provide equal access to information. Taking away legal notices from newspapers would deprive this group from knowledge that can help a case, or a decision be made.
Newspapers continue to have a high number of circulations, not only in the United States, but especially around the world. For example, China Daily has a circulation of 800,000, while The New York Times Sunday paper has a print circulation of 928,104. While these people might not be buying the paper specifically to read legal notices, the notice has been published and circulated in a proven manner and is up to the reader to read, browse or overlook. If the notices were only placed online, in some obscure corner of the internet, the number of passive readers would disappear altogether.
Not only do legal notices need to be accessible to all, but they are also required to be archived in a public place, such as a library or publishing company. This process is easier through the use of print media, given that it can be stored in different places without having to wait for a software system. In the future, these print legal notices will be available to retrieve from these public places, without the worry that the domain of a website is no longer active.
Lastly, a legal notice has to be verified that it was not altered once it was published. Most advertising agencies will provide an affidavit with a tear sheet, which can later be used to prove that the notice was published and circulated.
While an online public notice may seem practical to post, it can be totally hidden from a reader’s perspective.
International Advertising offers quick and easy placement of legal notices and public announcements in any newspapers in any country. For help with your next foreign legal notice, visit www.intl-advertising.com/newspapers or call +1 305 499 9000.
