Effective September 1st, 2012, the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure were significantly amended to address the discovery of electronically stored information (ESI). The amendments affect seven rules of civil procedure as discussed in more detail below. The Florida Supreme Court’s order is available at: http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2012/sc11 1542.pdf. The order provides a discussion and text of the amendments, including committee notes which, although not adopted as an official part of the rules, do provide valuable insight.

A key goal of the amendments is to parallel similar provisions in the Federal Rules. This allows state courts to refer to Federal case law (which has been ever expanding since the 2006 ediscovery amendments to the Federal Civil Rules) as guidance. Despite this goal, the new Florida Rules contain subtle variances from their federal counterparts. These variances have the potential to allow the Florida rules to give more guidance, yet allow more flexibility.