Since our launch of the redesigned TDCAA website in mid-November, we’ve gotten lots of feedback, most of it complimentary. Our goal was to make the site more user-friendly (both for our members and for our staff, who must maintain the site), streamlined, and foxier. We hope you agree that we’ve succeeded.
We’ve fielded a few common questions since the launch, and we wanted to provide answers in a wide forum.
Q
What happened to all of those sample forms that were in the Forms & Briefs sections of the old website?
A
TDCAA staff made the decision to remove forms and briefs because most of them were so old, they might be more harmful than helpful for prosecutors to use. In the future, when TDCAA hires an additional staff person to assist with legal research and technical assistance, we hope to reopen a forms and briefs section on the website and have sufficient staff to ensure the forms are up-to-date. Until that time, anyone from a prosecutors’ office seeking a particular form can call the TDCAA offices and speak with the research attorney, who will do his best to track down a current form from TDCAA, other publications, or another prosecutors’ offices.
If you are hunting for something that was noted in this newsletter, though, you could be in luck; those documents might exist on our server. Email the editor at [email protected] to request such a file.
Q
What happened to the links page? I used it all the time to get to the courts’ websites.
A
Again, keeping the links’ page current was a tough job, one we couldn’t adequately do with our current staff. We recommend simply bookmarking those sites you commonly visit rather than hopping to them from our website.
Q
I heard a rumor that there won’t be any more binders at your seminars, that the papers will be posted online. What gives?
A
That rumor is right on. Starting with January’s Prosecutor Trial Skills Course, we will no longer provide speakers’ PowerPoint printouts or papers in a big fat plastic binder.
Instead, upon registering for a seminar, attendees will receive an automatic email confirming their registration and providing a web address and password to enter it; at that address, folks can download papers and PowerPoint presentations for the upcoming seminar, print them out, and tote them to the conference (if desired). The web page will be available seven days before the conference and permanently shut down at its conclusion to ensure that only paid attendees can access its information. After that time, you’ll have to request the papers through TDCAA staff.
At the seminar itself, we will provide a slim paper folder with blank evaluation forms, an attendee list, a schedule, and a CD-Rom with all of the speakers’ papers and PowerPoint presentations (for those who can’t download them from the website or prefer to use a disk). We hope you’ll be as pleased as we are not to lug around a six-pound binder at the next Annual!