E-Filing and E-Service

The E-Filing Portal

Florida’s central system for filing in its courts, which lawyers must use under Rules 2.511 and 2.525. Anything submitted with a registered user’s login is that user’s own act and signature, even when a paralegal clicks Submit at the lawyer’s direction. The Portal’s stamp sets the filing time, and on a last day, unless a rule or order sets another time, the stamp must come by 11:59:59 p.m., eastern time.

Document Format

Rule 2.520(a) requires a document created for filing to have letter-size pages, consecutive page numbers, 1-inch margins, and type of at least 12 points. The Florida Courts Technology Standards add that a filed PDF must be searchable and that the preferred PDF/A file must not carry comments, annotations, or hidden deleted text. An exhibit the firm did not create, such as the other side’s discovery response, is appended to the document that relies on it.

Signature Block and Certificates

Rule 2.515(c) requires a signature block with each signer’s name, electronic signature indicator, mailing address, telephone number, and e-mail address for service, plus a lawyer’s Bar number and client. A non-dispositive motion adds a certificate of conferral above the signature block under Rule 1.202. A certificate of service gives the date, the people served, their service addresses, and the method, as Rule 2.516(f) sets out.

Minimization of Sensitive Information

Rule 2.425 limits a court filing to a known minor’s initials, the year of a birth date, and no part of a Social Security, bank, credit card, charge, or debit account number. Numbers such as a driver’s license, telephone, insurance policy, or customer account number may show only their last four digits, unless an exception in subdivision (b) applies. A black box drawn over a number does not meet the rule, because the digits stay in the file for anyone to copy.

Notice of Confidential Information

Rule 2.420(d)(1)(B) lists information the clerk must keep confidential, such as Social Security and bank account numbers, adoption records, and records of a minor’s settlement. A filer whose document contains any of it must file a Notice of Confidential Information within Court Filing at the same time, saying where it is. Filing a document also represents that its confidential and sensitive information has been protected under Rules 2.420 and 2.425.

Portal Service

Rule 2.516(b)(1) requires a document filed through the Portal to be served through its e-service, and service on each recipient on the service list is complete on filing. The filer selects the recipients from the case’s list and must immediately serve, by another permitted means, anyone the filer learns did not receive the document. A filed document is not served on the judge unless a statute, rule, administrative order, or court order requires it.

Correction Queue

Rule 2.525(f)(1) lets the clerk hold back only a document with a listed defect, such as a missing or wrong case style or several documents filed as one. It waits in a correction queue for 30 days after the filer is notified, and a corrected, substantially identical filing in that time relates back to the first attempt. The clerk dockets every other document and may note a rule violation, and the court may then strike it.

PACER and the RECAP Archive

PACER is the paid public window into CM/ECF, the federal courts’ filing system, and it charges by the page, with most documents and docket sheets capped at the price of 30 pages. Opinions are free, no fee is owed for a quarter at or below a set amount, and each party’s lawyer gets one free copy of each filing through the notice of electronic filing. The RECAP Archive holds free copies of whatever users of the RECAP browser extension bought, so it has only what someone paid for, and its copy of a docket can be out of date.

Part 1: Open the File

Temko & Eden, P.A. A three-lawyer firm on Beach Street in Daytona Beach. It still carries the names of its late founders. Dana Whitfield, the managing partner, handles civil litigation and real estate closings. Luis Ortega, a partner, handles family law and probate, and Kim Nguyen, an associate, handles personal injury. Marcy Cole is the legal assistant, Ron Pike is the bookkeeper and office manager, and you are the firm’s paralegal.

An email from Kim Nguyen, Friday, September 25, 2026. Kestrel still hasn’t produced the store’s video in Maria Zubieta’s case. Her deposition was nine days ago, so the reason Claire Whitcombe gave in July is gone, and when I called her this morning she said they won’t produce it without a court order. My motion to compel is on the shared drive, and Marcy put the three exhibits in one PDF. File it through the Portal under my account on Monday. Before you submit anything with my login, go through all of it: the format, the certificates, what the exhibits say about Maria and the store’s people, and who gets served. Marcy blacked out a couple of numbers, but check her work. Then tell me what you changed.

Download the draft motion, the exhibits, and the workbook, and read the workbook’s Start Here and Matter Record sheets. Then open the Florida Bar’s rules page from Resources. In the Rules of General Practice and Judicial Administration, read Rules 2.420(d), 2.425, 2.511, 2.515, 2.516, 2.520, and 2.525(e) and (f), and in the Rules of Civil Procedure, read Rule 1.202. Each one decides something you change in this activity.

Part 2: Take Out What the Record Cannot Hold

Read the motion and every page of the exhibits against Rule 2.425(a) and (b). A filing is a public record, so the question for each item is what the rule lets the court’s copy show, not whether the item feels private. Log each piece of designated sensitive information on the Minimization Log, one row for each place it appears, with the subdivision that governs it and what the filed copy will show. Before you trust a black box you did not draw, test it: search the PDF for the digits under it, or select the page’s text and paste it into a plain-text editor.

Fix the motion’s text in Word. For the exhibits, use a tool that removes what it covers, such as PDF24’s Redact PDF. Then run its OCR tool on the result so the pages can be searched again, and repeat your search and copy test on the new file. Every name and number in these files is fictional, so an online tool is fine here; with a real client’s file, use a program that runs on your own computer. Run the Minimization Auditor with your log and the rule’s text, and settle each point where it disagrees with you by reading the rule again. Then answer the three questions at the bottom of the sheet.

Part 3: Put the Motion in Filing Form

Check the motion against Rule 2.520(a) and Rule 2.515(c). Compare its caption with the case style on the Matter Record, since a wrong style is one of the few defects that send a filing to the correction queue. Add the certificate of conferral Rule 1.202 requires, drawn from Kim’s email, above the signature block. Before you save a PDF, find out what else the Word file carries: its Review tab and the save dialog’s options (Resources) show what would travel with it. Save the motion as a PDF/A, and join it to the redacted exhibits in one PDF, motion first, so the exhibits are appended to the document that relies on them. Then run the Clerk’s Review with a description of the finished file, and check each problem it raises against the rule it cites before you change anything.

Part 4: Choose Whom the Portal Serves

The Service List sheet shows the case’s service list as the Portal would present it when you file, and the Portal serves no one you have not selected. Decide for each row whether to serve, and give the rule or the manual page that decides it. Rule 2.516(a) and (c) and the manual’s Service List section answer every row. Then write the certificate of service in the form Rule 2.516(f) sets out, and put it in the motion above the signature block. Answer section C, what the firm must do if the Notice of Electronic Filing shows the motion never reached Claire Whitcombe. The Service Scenarios prompt gives you more cases like it to practice on.

Part 5: Walk the Portal and Write the Checklist

You will not file anything, and you do not need a Portal account. Open the E-Filer User Manual at “File Document(s) on Existing Case to Clerk” and walk its screens in order, from the E-Filing Map to Review and Submit. For each screen, fill in a row of section B of the Filing Checklist: what you would enter or choose for Kim’s motion, what you would check before going on, and the manual page. Watch for what the manual says about Volusia County on the Case Parties screen, about confidential information on the Documents screen, and about Submit itself.

Then write sections A, C, and D. Section A holds the checks on the document before anyone logs in, and section C what to confirm on the My Submissions page after Submit. Section D covers a filing’s last day, a Portal that is down, a filing in the correction queue, and service that fails. Rules 2.514(a), 2.516(b), and 2.525(e) and (f) answer most of it. Where no rule answers a situation, say so, and say what the firm does instead.

Part 6: Read a Federal Docket for Free

Federal courts take filings through CM/ECF, and the public reads them through PACER, a page at a time, for a fee. Open Brown & Brown Insurance Services, Inc. v. Legacy Insurance Group, LLC in the RECAP Archive from Resources. The case began in the circuit court for Volusia County and reached the federal court in Orlando by removal, so its first entry carries the state court’s record with it. Fill in the Docket Reading sheet with the case’s details and the two courts’ stamps on page 2 of the state court complaint. Then work out what PACER would charge for Document 1 at today’s fee, and what the free archive leaves out. Paste the docket’s entries into the Docket Translator, and check each row of its table against the docket page.

Part 7: Post Your Deliverables

Create one new discussion thread. Attach the filing as one PDF, the motion followed by Exhibits A through C, and the workbook with every sheet filled in. Add three to four sentences on the item in the packet you would most have regretted missing, and the rule that caught it.

Part 8: Share Chat Link

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Minimization Auditor

Source grounding ties every answer to words you can check, and the model never sees the documents, so each gap it names is a reason to look again rather than a finding. With a real client’s file, describe the items the way your log does and never paste the numbers into a public chatbot.

Clerk’s Review

Role assignment and one-question-at-a-time elicitation make you describe the file the way a reviewer sees it, which brings up details you stopped noticing. The split the prompt asks for matters, because the rule sends only a short list of defects to the queue and leaves the rest to the judge.

Service Scenarios

The example shows the model the size and shape of a good scenario, which is few-shot prompting, and answering before you see the rule makes you recall it instead of recognizing it. Check any answer that surprises you against the rule’s text, since Rule 2.516 was rewritten in 2025 and a model may quiz you on the old version.

Docket Translator

Structured output makes the model account for every entry, including the ones it cannot explain, and the instruction against guessing keeps a short docket description from turning into an invented summary. Check each row against the docket page itself, because a table can drop or merge entries without saying so.