A consortium of IT suppliers to the high-profile Bloody Sunday Inquiry jointly won a top legal IT award on 22 January.

The Society for Computers and Law (SCL) 2001 Award was presented by David Lock MP, the parliamentary secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD), and hosted by the Law Society.

The judging panel was chaired by IT consultant Andrew Levison of Baker Robbins. Judges included David Cannell, IT director at Hammond Suddards Edge, Jane Henderson, know-how manager at Macfarlanes and Grant Campbell, an IP/IT partner at Brodies.

The ceremony was a boost for the Government, which initiated two of the five projects nominated, including the winner, as part of its modernisation programme.

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, chaired by IT enthusiast Lord Saville of Newdigate (above), has been widely heralded as representing the courtroom of the future and is the flagship of the Government's civil justice reforms.

The inquiry makes extensive use of virtual reality technology, most commonly seen in computer games, to back up witness testimony.

The winning companies used film footage of the Bloody Sunday riots and computer graphics to give the court an eyewitness view of events from any point in Derry at any given point during the riots.

The inquiry also uses cutting-edge data-warehousing technology to display any one of millions of documents on giant screens within seconds. The proceedings are transcribed and can be published almost instantly using an innovative system from court reporting company Smith Bernal.

The consortium that won the award comprises ICL, NICLR, Legal Technologies, Smith Bernal, MK Audio, Toptel and Ramick. Runners-up included Perceptive Technology, for its Mentor product. Billed as an "intellectual capital management" solution, it includes knowledge management, workflow, document management, data-warehousing and customer relationship management applications.

Interface software was also cited as a runner-up for its knowledge management platform, the InterAction Relationship Intelligence Server (Iris).

Web-based training company 2Ends was cited for its CPD Online seminars and Ferrett Information Systems for its role in the government-sponsored Benefits Advice in Multi Media (Bamm) initiative.