Short answer. It has to be delivered conventionally. Subpoenas, protection orders, and writs are on the list of documents that must be served or filed personally or by registered mail when allowed, and shall not be served or filed electronically, unless the court expressly and specifically grants permission otherwise.
What the law says
must be served or filed personally or by registered mail when allowed, and shall not be served or filed electronically, unless express permission is granted by the [c]ourt
Rule 13, Section 14 — Conventional service or filing of orders, pleadings and other documents. Read the full provision →
A specific list of documents is carved out of electronic filing
Electronic service and filing is available generally under the rules, but certain categories are deliberately excluded from it. The rule lists four: initiatory pleadings and initial responsive pleadings such as an answer; subpoenas, protection orders, and writs; appendices and exhibits not readily amenable to electronic scanning; and sealed or confidential documents or records. Yours falls squarely into the second category. The exclusion binds whoever is doing the serving — it is not something the recipient can waive simply by agreeing in advance to accept electronic delivery instead.
What conventional service actually means here
For the documents on this list, the rule requires service or filing personally or by registered mail when allowed — the traditional channels — rather than mere electronic transmission. That is the default for a subpoena or a protection order specifically, precisely because of the weight and legal consequences those documents carry for the person being served, and because proof that they were actually received matters a great deal if compliance is later disputed.
The one way around it
The rule is not absolute: electronic service or filing of these documents becomes possible unless express permission is granted by the court. Without that specific court permission, though, the default rule applies and conventional delivery is required — a party cannot simply choose to serve a subpoena or protection order electronically on their own initiative, no matter how convenient that might genuinely be for everyone involved in a particular pending case.
Why this category gets special treatment
Subpoenas and protection orders compel someone to do or refrain from doing something, often urgently, and the consequences of getting service wrong — or of a recipient later disputing whether they were actually served — are serious. Requiring personal or registered-mail delivery, absent express court permission for something else, gives both sides a genuinely clearer, more provable record of when and how the document actually reached the specific person it was meant for, which matters most when the recipient later claims not to have known.