Florida Legal Secretary

Description

Prepare documents quickly and correctly with this practice-proven resource

Florida Legal Secretary is different from other legal references. Instead of detailed expositions of the law, it consists of hundreds of nuts-and-bolts procedures and completed forms:

Civil Litigation

• How to prepare, file, serve, and amend pleadings
• Preparing and serving written discovery
• How to prepare and file discovery motions
• Getting ready for trial
• Enforcing judgments

Real Estate

• Preparing purchase and sale documents
• How to prepare the mortgage
• Steps for closing sales
• How to foreclose mortgages, agreements for deeds, and statutory liens
• Drafting leases and terminating rental agreements

Organizing Businesses

• Reserving corporate names
• Preparing and filing corporate formation documents
• Housekeeping matters
• Forming LLCs and general and limited partnerships
• Mergers and dissolutions

Plus similarly-detailed procedures and forms for:

• Dissolution of marriage
• Estate administration
• Criminal litigation

This book-and-Digital Access package provides litigation and transactional forms with completion instructions and filing procedures. Each of the more than 1,000 forms accessible via an emailed zip file comes with a quick-reference procedure section in print that details:

• Whom to serve
• Who receives copies
• Other filing requirements and fees
• How many copies to make
• Cross-references to related procedural explanations
• Additional documents to prepare

Instead of digging through old files, needlessly calling the court clerk, or receiving returned, unfiled documents, you can now have at your fingertips the necessary forms, as well as detailed explanations of how to use them.

REVISION 27 HIGHLIGHTS

In this 27^th edition of Florida Legal Secretary, author Kathleen J. Hill brings you current on the governing law and procedures in the following practice areas, with new and updated text on:

Real Estate

• New! Additional Homestead for Deployed Service Members
• New! Classifications of Property
• New! Covenant Revitalization
  • Covenant or Restriction Revitalization by Parcel
  • Owners Not Subject to a Homeowners’ Association Definitions
• New! Curative Procedure for Scrivener’s Errors in Deeds

Business Organizations

• New! Voting Procedures; Inspectors of Election
• New! Remote Participation in Annual and Special Meetings of Shareholders
• New! Emergency Powers
• New! Action on a Plan of Merger or Share Exchange

Civil Litigation

• New! Legal and Official Advertisements
  • Where and in What Language Legal Notices to be Published
  •  Internet Website Publication
  • Proof of Publication; Uniform Affidavits Required
• New! Demand Exceeding Jurisdiction; Transfer of Action
• New! Uniform Interstate Depositions and Discovery Act

 Family Law 

• New! Exemption from Requirement to File and Serve Financial Affidavit
• New! Pleading Special Matters
• New! Pleadings, Motions, and Captions
• New! Dissolution of Marriage – Parties
  • Intervenors/Interpleaders
  • Misjoinder of Parties
  • Survivor; Substitution of Parties

 Estate Planning and Administration

• New! Disposition Without Administration of Intestate Personal Property in Small Estates

Criminal Law

• New! Sexual Cyberharassment
• New! White-Collar Crime Victims Protection Act

AND MORE!

ABBREVIATED TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 REAL ESTATE
CHAPTER 2 BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER 3 CIVIL LITIGATION
CHAPTER 4 FAMILY LAW
CHAPTER 5 ESTATE PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION
CHAPTER 6 GUARDIANSHIP
CHAPTER 7 CRIMINAL LAW

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen J. Hill, PLS, CLA, retired as a paralegal as the assistant for the General Counsel, State of Florida Department of Management Services. Previously she was a paralegal for the Chief of Litigation for the Department of Transportation. Prior to her employment with the State of Florida, she was the President of Paralegal & Attorney Service Bureau, Inc. and owned and managed Capitol Services in Tallahassee, Florida. Both companies specialized in providing a full complement of attorney services for attorneys nationwide. Kathleen specializes in litigation, family law, and labor law.

Kathi received a B.S. degree in mass communications from Florida State University in 1970. She was certified as a PLS (Professional Legal Secretary) in November 1976 and a CLA (Certified Legal Assistant) in January 1977. She was a member of the Advisory Board for the Legal Assisting Program at Tallahassee Community College. She is past-president of Florida Legal Assistants, Inc. and has served as an officer, board member, and committee chair for both FLA, Inc. and the National Association of Legal Assistants, Inc. She is a past president of Tallahassee Legal Secretaries Association (TLSA) and a past member of the Advisory Board for Professional Legal Assistants, Inc. (PLA).

Her writing credits include Florida Legal Secretary Filing Directory (Shepards/McGraw-Hill) and articles for Legal Assistant Today (“Ethics and the Free-Lance Legal Assistant”), Facts and Findings (NALA), In Brief (FLA, Inc.), and Res Ipsa Loquitor (TLSA). She also wrote Working with the Legislative Process (Capitol Services), edited and assisted in writing portions of the CLA Study Guide (D&S Publishing & Florida Legal Assistants, Inc.), and assisted in editing the “Law Office Management” chapter of the Manual for Legal Assistants (West Publishing).