How to Draft and Serve a Florida Request to Produce (Rule 1.350)

In a Florida civil lawsuit, a request for production of documents is the discovery tool you use under Rule 1.350 of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure to make another party hand over records, electronic files, tangible items, or access to property. You draft a numbered written request, serve it through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, and the other side has 30 days to produce the materials or object. As of April 1, 2026, both the request and the response must be served on every party in the case, not only on the party who has to produce.¹

What You Can Ask For

Rule 1.350 reaches three categories of material. The first is documents and electronically stored information: paper records, contracts, photographs, audio and video, emails, text messages, database exports, and metadata. If the data needs to be translated through detection devices to be readable, the producing party has to do the translating.² The second is tangible things — physical items that can be inspected, tested, or sampled, such as the allegedly defective product in a product liability case. The third is entry onto land or property the other party controls, so you can measure, photograph, survey, test, or sample it.

Everything you ask for has to fit within the scope of discovery set by Rule 1.280(c). Florida has adopted proportionality language that tracks the federal standard: discovery is limited to nonprivileged matter relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, weighed against factors including the amount in controversy, the parties’ access to the information, their resources, and whether the burden outweighs the likely benefit.³

For electronic files, you can specify the format you want — native files, PDFs, or another form. If you don’t specify, the producing party can deliver the data in the form they ordinarily keep it or in a reasonably usable form.⁴ Say what you want up front. Otherwise you may end up arguing later about whether a stack of printouts satisfies a request for emails you needed to search electronically.

One boundary worth naming: Rule 1.350 works only between parties. If you need records from a bank, an employer, a hospital, or anyone else who is not a party, that comes through a subpoena to a non-party under Rule 1.351, which has its own notice procedure.

Drafting the Request

There is no mandatory statewide form for a general civil request for production. You build the document from Rule 1.350’s requirements using the format your court recognizes. Florida Supreme Court Approved Family Law Forms include discovery templates for family cases, but general civil practice follows the rule directly.

Caption and Introduction

Every filing opens with the court caption: the name of the court, the case number, and the full names of every plaintiff and defendant exactly as they appear on the initial complaint. Beneath the caption, a short introductory paragraph identifies who is making the request, who must respond, and the deadline for responding.

The Numbered Requests

The core of the document is a numbered list of the items or categories of items you want produced. Rule 1.350 requires each category to be described with “reasonable particularity.”² In practice, that means being specific enough that the responding party can tell what to look for without guessing.

“All documents relating to the contract” is too loose if the parties have signed fifty contracts. “All documents relating to the January 15, 2025 construction services agreement between Plaintiff and Defendant, including all amendments, change orders, and correspondence referencing that agreement” is the kind of description that holds up. Narrow, focused requests are also harder to knock down with an overbreadth objection.

Each request also has to specify a reasonable time, place, and manner for the inspection or copying.² For paper records, that usually means an attorney’s office. For electronic files, a secure download link or encrypted drive is standard.

Certificate of Service and Signature

Close the document with a certificate of service stating how and when you delivered it to every other party, followed by your signature block with name, address, phone number, and email. An attorney signs if you have one. The email address matters because Florida’s system runs on electronic service.

Serving the Request

Service of documents after the initial complaint is governed by Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.516. Documents filed through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal must be served using the portal’s built-in e-service function, which transmits a copy to every address on the service list.⁵ If you learn a recipient did not receive the document, you must serve them immediately by another permitted method.

Self-represented litigants use the same portal. When creating an account, choose “Self-Represented Litigant” as the filer role, then file and serve electronically the way an attorney would.⁶ Sign every document before uploading.

Under the 2026 amendment, the request goes to every party, not only the one that has to produce.¹ Timing depends on who is receiving it. You can serve a request on the plaintiff at any time after the case begins. For any other party, you can serve the request with or after service of process and the initial pleading.²

The Response Deadline

The responding party has 30 days from the date of service to serve a written response. A defendant who receives the request together with the initial summons and complaint gets 45 days instead, which gives a new defendant time to find counsel before dealing with discovery.² The court can shorten or extend either deadline. The response itself, like the request, must be served on all parties under the 2026 amendment.¹

What a Proper Response Must Contain

A response is not just a stack of documents or a download link. It is a written filing that answers each numbered request individually. For every item, the responding party either agrees to produce the materials as requested or states specific grounds for objecting, along with the reasons.²

A few requirements tighten the standard. If an objection applies to only part of a request, the response has to identify the objectionable part and permit inspection of the rest. Every objection has to state whether any responsive materials are actually being withheld on the basis of that objection, which prevents a party from lodging boilerplate and quietly producing nothing. When documents are produced, they must either be organized as they exist in the normal course of business or labeled to match the categories in the request.

Missing the deadline can waive the right to object and expose the responding party to sanctions. An incomplete or evasive response can be treated as a failure to respond at all.

Common Objections and Privilege Logs

Objections have to be specific to the individual request. A blanket phrase copied across every item rarely holds up. The recurring objections are privilege (attorney-client, work product, or another recognized privilege), overbreadth (the request sweeps in material unrelated to any claim or defense), undue burden (the cost of production is disproportionate to the value of the information, evaluated against Rule 1.280(c)(1)’s proportionality factors),³ and relevance. A response that recites “overly broad, unduly burdensome, and not relevant” without more is the kind of formulaic objection that usually does not survive a motion to compel.

When documents are withheld on the basis of privilege, Rule 1.280(b)(5) requires a privilege log. The log identifies each withheld document by date, author, recipients, type, privilege asserted, and a brief subject-matter description, without revealing the privileged content. Failing to provide a timely, adequate log can lead a court to order the documents produced or, in some situations, treat the privilege as waived. If you receive a response claiming privilege but no log, raise it early.

When the Other Side Won’t Comply

If a party fails to respond, responds evasively, or hides behind improper objections, the remedy is a motion to compel under Rule 1.380. Before filing, you must certify in good faith that you tried to resolve the dispute without court involvement, typically through a call, letter, or email explaining the deficiency and asking for compliance.² Courts enforce this requirement. A motion filed without any attempt to confer can be denied on that ground alone, and the court will not award expenses to a movant who skipped the step.

If the court grants the motion, the non-compliant party generally pays the requesting party’s reasonable expenses, including attorney’s fees. Continued refusal after an order to produce opens the door to steeper sanctions: the court can treat the matters at issue as established in the requesting party’s favor, bar the disobedient party from supporting or opposing specific claims or introducing certain evidence, strike pleadings, stay the case, dismiss the action, enter a default judgment, or treat the failure as contempt. Courts typically start with fee-shifting and escalate only if the party keeps stonewalling, but the trajectory puts the whole case at risk.

Who Pays for Production

The default in Florida is that the responding party bears the cost of gathering, reviewing, and producing the materials, including employee time, copying or scanning, and any technical work needed to extract electronic data.⁷

Cost-shifting is possible when retrieval would be unreasonably expensive. Under Rule 1.280(d)(1), a party can object to producing electronically stored information from sources that are not reasonably accessible because of burden or cost.⁷ If the requesting party still wants the data, the court can order production on the condition that the requesting party pay some or all of the retrieval cost. Backup tapes, legacy systems, and decommissioned databases are the usual candidates. Active email and current file servers almost never qualify.

1
Supreme Court of Florida. In Re: Amendments to Florida Rules of Civil Procedure 1.350 and 1.370
2
The Florida Bar. Florida Rules of Civil Procedure
3
Supreme Court of Florida. In Re: Amendments to Florida Rules of Civil Procedure
4
Florida Supreme Court. Response to Comments to Proposed Amendments to Address Discovery of Electronically Stored Information
5
The Florida Bar. Proposed Amendments to the Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.516
6
Florida Courts. Filing Your Forms
7
The Florida Bar. Beast of (Shifting) Burden: What Constitutes Undue Burden Sufficient to Shift ESI Production Costs Under Fla R Civ P 1.280