Sometime you might just want to sue a corporation. Your lawsuit (Complaint) has to be served on the corporation's registered agent. These are on file in the Secretary of State's office where they incorporated. It can be a time consuming process sometimes.

To make it easier, we are providing a link we learned about today from LawSites, the blog of legal tech author/lawyer Robert Ambrogi. Go here, and you can find out the name and address of a corporation's registered agent. The list is provided by Maryland attorney Terry Berger.

Most states provide the information for free. Here's Terry's breakdown:

"42 states have free web access to find a corporation's resident agent.

4 states charge to get this information online (IN, MN, NE, and OK). Of those 4 states, 3 offer the info free by phone (IN, MN, and NE). Minnesota is the first state in the country to start charging to get this information online where it was previously free. (To get the information free, you now need to tie up an employee.)

Only 1 state in the entire country, NJ, charges to get this public information, even by phone. (New Jersey advised me that you can avoid their fee if you fly/drive to downtown Trenton, pay for parking, then go to the State Office Building.)

3 states (NH, OK, and SD) and DC have free online searches in the works and anticipate having free online search capability soon.

Only 1 state (DE) has no plans at all to offer online search functions for resident agent information.

Puerto Rico has not responded to numerous requests for information."

We also came across The Shout today, a law blog by cyberlawyer Jennifer Granick, who directs the public interest law and technology clinic at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. There, her work focuses on the interaction of free speech, privacy, computer security, law and technology. Jennifer is very well known within the hacker community, having represented (among many others) Kevin Poulsen and alleged eBay hacker Jerome Heckencamp, who, notoriously, fired her.