Bell County District Attorney E-Discovery Portal Quick Guide for Attorneys 3/17/2014 Version 1.2
Information and System Requirements The E-Discovery portal has been developed to provide the District Attorney s Office with the ability to electronically upload discoverable documents to a secure website. The documents can then be viewed or downloaded by authorized attorneys assigned to the case. The portal site for attorney interaction to view and download discovery documents is: https://dadefenseportal.co.bell.tx.us To use the external Attorney Portal a browser that meets the following requirements is required: IE 8 or greater (Internet Explorer) Chrome any version (Google) Firefox 7 or greater (Mozilla) Opera 11+ or greater (MAC) Safari 5+ or greater (MAC) 1
Attorney Portal - Login During the process of creating a new user profile for an attorney or updating of a case by the District Attorney s Office, the assigned attorney will receive emails notifying them that they have been registered for the E-Discovery portal or documents for an assigned case have been added to the portal. The attorneys can follow the link provided in the email or can access the portal directly by entering http://dadefenseportal.co.bell.tx.us in one of the supported browsers listed above. Step One: Using the email address as the username and the temporary password provided in the email the attorney can log into the portal: If the attorney has not logged in before they will be required to reset the password upon the first successful login: 2
Attorney Portal Case and Discovery Management Step Two: Once logged into the portal, all cases assigned to the attorney will display in the sample grid displayed below: The grid provides a lot of information to the user at a glance: Defendant Name Files This column provides the hyperlink to the documents for the case as well as provides a total number of documents available Expiration Date To manage the volume of cases and associated documents, the system automatically assigns a six month expiration date. After this date, the case and the documents will no longer be available on the portal. However, this date can be extended by the DA s office. Case # - This is the case number assigned by DA s Office Offense Description Agency Arresting Agency on the case Incident # - The Arresting Agency s case number Portal Date The date the case was created and sent to the portal Step Three: To download the files the attorney will select View Files. A disclaimer pop-up box (seen below) will display that explains the regulations surrounding the downloading of the case documents. The attorney must read and agree to the terms. If they disagree they will not be able to download the files. 3
Step Four: Once the attorney agrees with the disclaimer, the documents are displayed in a grid: An attorney may quickly view each individual document by selecting the Get File button located in the grid. A pop-up window allows the user to open the document and view it without having to save it: If the user does want to save the document(s) to their system, there is the ability to download all of the documents in a zip format: Based upon the configuration and set-up of the personal device being utilized, the system will either prompt the user to designate a location or the documents will automatically save into a system download folder. The documents will be downloaded in a zip format. A password is not required to unzip the contents, but the system must have a Windows zip extract process loaded on the operating system. 4
Attorney Portal Support Password Reset o Make contact with legal assistant within the District Attorney s Office. An auto-generated email will be sent with new temporary password. User will be forced to change it immediately. Bell County Technology Services (T.S.) can only provide support once a connection to the portal has been established. T.S. staff cannot troubleshoot internet connection, browser support or personal system issues. o Dedicated Email for Portal Issues DA.DefensePortal@co.bell.tx.us Monitored by multiple persons replies and resolutions made as soon as possible 5