When I was in private practice, I acted for the Bloody Sunday Tribunal. The inquiry is chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate (originally a Law Lord and now one of the Supreme Court Justices) and is likely to report next year, some 12 years after it was set up.
Much has been written about the inquiry, and doubtless considerably more is to come when the report is published in 2010, but I was interested to see that Lord Saville’s experience in the Bloody Sunday Inquiry helped to inform the design of the IT systems which have been developed for the Supreme Court.
According to a recent article by Richard Susskind (‘How Bloody Sunday helped to future-proof the Supreme Court’s IT‘, The Times, 1st October 2009) Lord Saville chaired a committee including Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, Master of the Rolls, Jenny Rowe, Chief Executive of the Supreme Court and various legal technologists, systems specialists and ministry officials.
Susskind says “Introducing IT to the Supreme Court was made easier because a high-tech court was envisaged from the outset. The Ministry of Justice and various IT suppliers developed the systems and an IT user group oversaw the project”.
I had no involvement in the selection of the IT systems used by the Bloody Sunday Inquiry but there was a considerable amount of material to be handled and I will always be grateful to Kelvin McGregor Alcorn (then of Oyez Legal Technologies, now of Deloitte) for introducing me to the delights of electronic document management during the course of the almost 6 years I worked with the inquiry.
Happy memories!