Portal being retooled to handle larger documents.

Lawyers may soon be able to electronically file and serve larger documents with the state court system.

The Florida Courts E-Filing Authority gave initial approval to a list of software changes to improve and update the statewide portal that handles e-filing for the court system. Those improvements are scheduled to be made around April 15 and will require action by other agencies before the upgrades are made.

Other planned improvements are a way for lawyers and judges to directly exchange and propose orders through the portal and allowing judges to be electronically served via the portal.

The authority approved the changes at a November 12 meeting. Most of the improvements must also be reviewed by the Supreme Court's Florida Court Technology Commission, which oversees court technology matters and which was meeting as this News went to press.

The proposed upgrade would increase the size of an allowable submission from 25 to 50 megabytes and up the size of an email attachment file from five to 10 megabytes. Carolyn Weber, portal project manager for the authority, said the Rules of Judicial Administration, which currently sets the size for electronic filings, must also be amended.

That amendment is in the works, but may not be completed by April, she said.

The document-size regulation is one of several "technical" standards in the Rules of Judicial Administration that are being considered for...