Fees and costs hiked to offset some court cuts.

It has dozens of pages, multiple charts at the end, and enough of the standard strike-through language and underlined new verbiage to cross the average reader's eyes.

But what might look like just another dry legislative enactment--titled CS/SB 1790--will affect many if not most lawyers in Florida as well as have long-range impacts on the funding of the court system.

Among other things, the bill, pending before Gov. Charlie Crist as this News went to press, raises dozens of filing fees and court costs, which in turn helped make up a shortfall in state funding for the judicial branch and for the Department of Corrections.

It also made several other changes, notably switching the payment of jurors and witnesses from the courts to the clerks of courts (who got a resultant increase in their fees they are allowed to keep to offset the extra expense).

Perhaps the most notable fee increases, according to Fred Baggett, the Tallahassee private attorney who is also general counsel for the Florida Association of Court Clerks, is an increase in the civil filing fee from $250 to $295, and an increase in the filing fee to evict a tenant from $70 to $295. In addition, defendants who include a counterclaim in their response will have to pay another $295 filing fee, as will those making third-party pleadings.

From the perspective of the courts--and state attorneys and public defenders--the most notable aspect of the bill is the money it raises. According to figures from the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, CS/SB 1790 is projected to raise $121.1 million that will go to the state's general revenue fund and another $14.9 million will go to various trust funds.

Of the new general revenue funds, about $75 million was allocated to the courts, state attorneys, public defenders, and related agencies.

For the $14.9 million in trust funds, $8.6 million was set aside for the courts' mediation programs. Under the existing court fee structure, $1 from each civil suit filing fee was set aside for mediation, which beginning July 1 with the new fee system, $16 of each $295 filing fee will be sent to the mediation trust fund.

A new mandatory cost of prosecution--$50 for every misdemeanor case and $100 for every felony case--is expected to raise $3.6 million, with 100 percent of that going to a trust fund for state attorneys. (Prosecutors can seek and judges can grant a higher amount.) There's a similar defense cost to be imposed on behalf of...