There are a number of limitations, boundaries, and prohibitions that, if respected, go a long way toward protecting sheriffs and deputies from legal liability, customer hostility, berating judges, indignant attorneys, public embarrassment, unnecessary confusion, and messy courtroom entanglements. Whether the sheriff’s office serves 1,000 or 500,000 civil papers each year, it is the mistakes that invariably draw the most attention and are longest remembered. The following list is surely not all encompassing but contains a number of suggestions for avoiding the aforementioned unpleasant sorts of attention.