Free email service and e-discovery education programs now available.

The Florida Bar is now offering free online educational programs to bring members up to speed on the Supreme Court's new service by email and e-discovery rules.

Those new mandates are part of the transition to a court system where filing, service, and access will be largely electronic. (The court also has released an opinion (case no.11-399) which sets deadlines for requiring electronic filing of documents with the court through a developing statewide Internet portal.)

Service by email becomes mandatory September 1 in civil, probate, small claims, and family law divisions of the trial courts, as well as for all appellate cases. For criminal trial court matters, the court acknowledged that state attorneys, public defenders, and regional conflict counsels have limited staff and budgets to accommodate the technology improvements and training necessary for service by email. It set the deadline for service by email in those cases for October 1, 2013. (Case no. SC10-2101.)

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Terry Hill, director of the Bar's Programs Division, said Board of Governors member Laird Lile, who also serves on the Supreme Court's Florida Technology Commission overseeing the technological overhaul of the courts, has put together a PowerPoint presentation that will serve as a standalone education piece to steer Bar members through the new mandatory service by email requirement.

"The PowerPoint presentation is now available on the Bar website and will be distributed to the various sections and divisions of the Bar for incorporation into their upcoming CLE programs," Hill said.

The presentation can be accessed by going to floridabar.org/LOMAS.

The service by email rule (Rule of Judicial Administration 2.516) requires that attorneys who have email addresses provide the court with a primary email address and allows them to add two secondary email addresses for receiving service. Emails used for serving documents may not exceed five megabytes in size, although they can be broken up into multiple emails. The email must contain, in all capital letters, in the subject line the words "SERVICE OF COURT DOCUMENT," along with the case number for that proceeding. Documents must be in PDF format.

E-discovery Education

The Florida Supreme Court has also approved procedural rule amendments governing the discovery and production of electronically stored information in civil cases.

"Every Florida lawyer handling matters governed by the Rules of Civil Procedure must...