Legal Commentary

Inspiring Words: Monday night, at LegalTech New York, we recognized the winners of the 2009 LTN Awards ? leaders of our community who showed creativity and innovation to develop technology tools to help legal professionals. It was wonderful to be able to present the awards to such stellar members of our community.

The winner for Most Innovative Use of Technology in a Trial was the technology team of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, who are prosecuting five men for crimes against Humanity. The first was Kaing Guek Eav (a.k.a. Comrade Duch) who personally oversaw the torture and execution of more than 14,000 prisoners during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. He awaits his verdict which is expected shortly.

LTN's former news editor, Claire Duffett, wrote a poignant and powerful story about the efforts of the technology team, in our December issue.

The ECCC has extremely limited resources for its mission. But with on-the-fly creativity, sheer grit, and low- and high- technology tools, the  team handled both expected and spontaneous technology challenges --  everything from translating the proceedings into English, Khmer, and French; to managing a satellite system so that Cambodians in far flung villages can follow the proceedings.

We were so very honored that His Excellency Dr. Sea Kosal, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Cambodia to the United Nations, took time from his hectic schedule to join us at LegalTech to accept the award. He graced us with a short speech that was moving and inspirational. Thanking Ms. Duffett for focusing attention on the tribunal, he  gently reminded us that technology doesn't just help legal teams deliver better, faster, cheaper legal services ?  technology can help foster justice.

Photo by Russ Curtis