Civil Litigation
This course provides an overview of all phases of Florida and federal civil litigation with an emphasis on tort claims. Prepares students to perform as a Florida civil litigation paralegal. Topics covered include civil procedure, evidence, discovery, drafting pleadings and motions, client/witness interviews, and trial preparation.
- 1Activity 1
Introduction to Civil Litigation
Civil litigation is how our legal system resolves disputes between private parties without violence or self-help, and it is where most paralegals and many lawyers spend…
- 2Activity 2
Pre-Suit
Civil disputes are often won or lost before a complaint is ever filed. Before taking a case, a litigation team has to decide two things: whether the facts actually…
- 3Activity 3
Jurisdiction and Venue
Before a court can decide who wins a lawsuit, it has to be the right court. Two questions settle that: does this court have the power to hear this kind of case and to…
- 4Activity 4
Initial Pleadings
The complaint is the document that turns a private dispute into a lawsuit, and how it is written often decides whether the case survives its first challenge. Federal…
- 5Activity 5
Response to Initial Pleadings
When a lawsuit lands, the clock starts the moment the defendant is served, and the first move shapes everything that follows. A defendant can meet the allegations…
- 6Activity 6
Discovery
Most civil cases never reach a jury. They are resolved on what the parties learn during discovery, the phase where each side can compel the other to hand over evidence:…
- 7Activity 7
Motion Practice
A civil lawsuit is run through motions. Between the complaint that opens a case and the verdict that ends it, the parties keep asking the judge to do specific things:…
- 8Activity 8
Evidence
A trial decides who wins on the facts, but the jury never hears every fact. Evidence law is the filter that decides what reaches them: which statements, records,…
- 9Activity 9
Settlement
Most civil lawsuits end in a settlement, not a verdict, so the rules that shape settlement often decide who really comes out ahead. The sharpest of these rules put money…
- 10Activity 10
Trial Preparation
Most civil cases settle, yet a case is only worth settling because the other side believes it will be tried well, and that belief is built in the final weeks before…
- 11Activity 11
Trial
Trial problems do not arrive on a schedule. A witness goes missing the week before jury selection, a key exhibit turns out to have no foundation, a laptop full of…
- 12Activity 12
Case Management
Once a lawsuit is filed, a clock starts running, and the court, not the parties, controls it. In January 2025 the Florida Supreme Court rewrote Rule 1.200 to require…
- PProject
Create a Case Study
Everything you have worked on this semester ends up in one place: a case file. The documents in a real file have to agree with each other, because the complaint, the…