Deadlines, service, and the case-management order
Civil Procedure Basics — the Rules of the Road
Florida civil cases run on the Rules of Civil Procedure: every case is generally assigned a case-management track with binding deadlines, service has its own rules and time-math, and the court's orders outrank every default.
The case-management order is the campaign calendar: tracks (streamlined, general, complex) generally carry binding discovery cutoffs and trial periods — attorneys commonly calendar backward from the cutoff, and so should anyone.
Time computation is mechanical: day one is the day after the trigger, short periods commonly skip weekends and holidays, deadlines landing on non-court days roll, and mail service generally adds five days. The platform's deadline engine runs this math with the full trace.
Signing a filing means something: Florida's signature rule carries representations — the signer read it, there are good grounds, it isn't for delay, and (effective June 2026) the cited authorities exist and are accurately cited. Courts may sanction filings inconsistent with those representations.
Do it, don't just read it
Common questions
Where do I find the actual rule text?
On this platform, verbatim and version-tracked — every rule page shows the text, its hash, and its verification state. Summaries (including this page) are never a substitute.
My deadline math disagrees with the other side's — who wins?
The computation rules, applied mechanically. Run it in the deadline engine with the trace showing every step, and verify anything urgent with the court.
What is the Civ Pro Pass?
Paste any draft and get every Florida civil rule it must obey — the base set for the document type plus rules triggered by what the text actually says, each linked to its verbatim text.
The governing text — verbatim, never paraphrased
This guide is editorial; the linked pages carry the verbatim, hash-pinned text with its verification state. When a guide and the rule text could ever differ, the rule text wins — that is the whole doctrine.
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