News

Diana and Dodi Inquest

The long-awaited Inquest hearing into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed opened at the High Court this month with Merrill Legal Solutions playing a vital role in what will undoubtedly be the most high profile Inquest of the year. The hearing is a highly sensitive matter and the Merrill team has worked with the Coroner’s office from the outset to advise on their issues and to ensure that our services are tailored to their very specific requirements.

Merrills will be providing a huge range of services to the Inquest over the next six months, including the production of real-time transcripts using our LiveNote® technology, with documents referred to in court hyperlinked to the transcript, and electronic document management with our new Lextranet case management system. Throughout the hearing evidence will be delivered to the Coroner, Inquest team, jury and Interested Persons via our state of the art electronic presentation of evidence services which present documents and images on a network of screens in Court 73, dispensing with the need to have sets of hard copy trial bundles. Using our Merrill Lextranet software, the legal teams can research documents at their workstations in court, as well as following and annotating the live transcription feed which is also being delivered to the watching media attending in Court and in the Annex within the Royal Courts of Justice.

As part of this service our team have provided training on how to use the in-court technology not only to the Inquest team, but also to the Interested Parties, who include representatives of the Spencer and Al Fayed families, the Royal Princes and also Trevor Rees and the family of Henri Paul.

In addition, Merrill’s Media, Broadcasting and Communications team provided a live broadcast feed to the BSkyB newsroom for the first three days of the Inquest. This is a live text feed from the court room on to the Sky News interactive channel, a service which we have provided on many high profile cases and inquests, including Sion Jenkins, Damilola Taylor, Deep Cut and the Bulford Court Martial.

Sarah Andrews, Group Managing Director of Merrill Legal Solutions says: “We are unique in being able to offer this particular suite of services. The complex and lengthy nature of the Inquest means that the electronic document management that we will be providing will be invaluable in ensuring that everyone involved keeps abreast of the information and evidence being heard. In addition, our team will be on hand to provide support whenever required”

For further information on our Inquest services, please contact Reema Corney at reema.corney@merrillcorp.com.

Daily transcripts of the Inquest will be published on the Inquest’s website at www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk