lexnet It is an essential tool for justice professionals, since everyone must use it to send their writings. It is a computerized system for managing notifications, owned by the Ministry of Justice, through which send, accept and deliverto other participants in the judicial procedure, the different writings signed by prosecutors, lawyers, judicial experts, Lawyers of the Administration of Justice, judges, prosecutors and other professionals, such as state attorneys and social graduates. In fact, its use is regulated in a Royal Decree.
As explained by the IT expert Javier Rubio Alamilloa registered computer engineer, it can sometimes happen that, due to some type of error in Lexnet, the system issues the delivery certificate with a timestamp that is later at the end of procedural deadline or substantive indicated, despite the fact that the letter was sent within the deadline. This was what happened to a prosecutor who was sent a brief to be submitted to a procedure, which was rejected in the first instance for allegedly having been submitted after the deadline.
This rejection motivated this professional to be entrusted with an expert computer report to demonstrate that the document had been delivered within the term. The resolution of this matter has allowed Rubio Alamillo to establish what steps must be followed to demonstrate that Lexnet has failed.
Forensic analysis and expert report
In order to demonstrate that an error has occurred in the Lexnet program, a forensic analysis of the prosecutor’s computer hard drive would have to be carried out, as well as an expert report. “To preserve the chain of custody of the evidence, a disk clone must be performed before a notary”explains Rubio Alamillo. In this specific case, once the cloning was done, the X-Ways forensic tool was used to index the hard drive and determine at what time the email sent containing the letter from the prosecutor had been received in the attorney’s email account. appeal filed. Using the OsForensics tool, the time at which the prosecutor had downloaded these files was determined.
Web browser analysis
When accessing the Lexnet system through the web version, the files in which the history is stored must be analyzed. In the case for which Rubio carried out the expert opinion, since the brief had been submitted through the Lexnet website (www.infolexnube.es), using the Internet Explorer browser (the only one compatible with Lexnet at that time, although current date, this browser has already been discontinued by Microsoft), the file “WebCache01.dat” was analyzed.
Thus, it was shown that the letter uploaded by the attorney was sent at a different time than that indicated by Lexnet, demonstrating that it had arrived on time. “In the Lexnet system there was some kind of error in the processing of the documents sent, in the words of the attorney, that the website was ‘thinking’, but it shows that the sending occurred several minutes before the deadline” , details the computer expert.
The court, which requested a “certification” that the system had failed, admitted the expert report and determined that the brief had been submitted in a timely manner. From the office of computer expert Javier Rubio Alamillo, it has been shown that Lexnet can fail, but that there is a way to counteract these failures: through a computer expert report.
