Graham Smith-Bernal (born 17 January 1958) is a British innovator and entrepreneur. His companies, Smith-Bernal International and Opus 2 International, created technologies which facilitated virtual and hybrid court, arbitral and public enquiry hearings and led to paperless trials throughout multiple global jurisdictions.

Early life

Smith-Bernal grew up and went to school in

Slough, Berkshire Slough () is a town in Berkshire, England, in the Thames Valley, west of central London and north-east of Reading, Berkshire, Reading, at the intersection of the M4 motorway, M4, M40 motorway, M40 and M25 motorway, M25 motorways. It is part ...

. He left school with a single ‘O’ level. After business college he joined the UK’s first

stenography Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''s ...

course becoming, while still a teenager, one of the UK’s first qualified court stenographers. His first job was as an official court reporter in London

Crown Court The Crown Court is the criminal trial court, court of first instance in England and Wales responsible for hearing all indictable offences, some Hybrid offence, either way offences and appeals of the decisions of magistrates' courts. It is ...

s, High Courts and arbitrations.

Career

In 1990, Smith-Bernal devised the interactive real-time transcription and

evidence management Evidence management is the administration and control of evidence related to an event so that it can be used to prove the circumstances of the event, and so that this proof can be tested by independent parties with confidence that the evidence prov ...

system, ''LiveNote''. In 2011, he created the

cloud-based Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

collaborative

software platform A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the ''summation of the requi ...

, ''Opus 2 Magnum'' for managing evidence in major disputes and inquiries. Previously, in 1981, Smith-Bernal set up his first business, Smith-Bernal International (SBI), specialising in providing

verbatim Verbatim means word for word. It may refer to: * ''Verbatim'' (album), a 1996 album by Bob Ostertag * "Verbatim" (song), a 2015 song by Blackbear * Verbatim (brand), a brand of storage media and flash memory * Verbatim (horse) Verbatim (1965 ...

reporting services in

litigation A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. ...

arbitration Arbitration is a formal method of dispute resolution involving a third party neutral who makes a binding decision. The third party neutral (the 'arbitrator', 'arbiter' or 'arbitral tribunal') renders the decision in the form of an 'arbitrati ...

and public inquiry hearings. A year later SBI was appointed as Official Court Reporter to the 11 Crown Courts at

Knightsbridge Knightsbridge is a residential and retail district in central London, south of Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park. It is identified in the London Plan as one of two international retail centres in London, alongside the West End of London, West End. ...

and subsequently to a further 70 courts in 8 UK cities. SBI pioneered the introduction of computer-aided transcription and a digital transcript management software. Each sped up transcriptions and provided lawyers with digital transcripts. In 1990 SBI’s new software division created the world’s first

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

based real-time interactive software transcription programme, ''LiveNote''. This enabled lawyers to annotate and search live real-time transcript testimony, reducing manual note taking performed by judges and lawyers in complex hearings. Its creation saw SBI appointed to hearings including

BCCI The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the principal national governing body of the sport of cricket in India. Its headquarters are situated at the Cricket Centre in Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. BCCI is the wealthiest governing body ...

and Lloyds of London disputes. The technology was used by the defence team on the OJ Simpson trial in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

in 1995 and in Lord Saville’s

Bloody Sunday Inquiry The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry or the Saville Report after its chairman, Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 by British Prime Minister Tony Blair after campaigns for a second inquiry by families of ...

established in 1998 by

British Prime Minister The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet, and selects its ministers. Modern pri ...

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...

. After selling SBI in 1997, Smith-Bernal retained the US software business and saw ''LiveNote'' become a standard for managing deposition hearings, with more than 80% of the top 100 US law firms signed up on enterprise licenses. In 2006, ''LiveNote'' was sold to

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational corporation, multinational content-driven technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and maintains its headquarters at 1 ...

for an undisclosed sum. In 2011 Smith-Bernal set up Opus 2 International to develop the company’s Magnum software. This facilitated seamless collaboration between remote and in-court teams of lawyers and their clients across all case materials, transcripts and documents as well as synchronised audio and video. It was first used in the Berezovsky v Abramovich trial in London in 2012, where it saved more than 5 million pieces of hard copy paper. In 2018, for his work with Opus 2 and Magnum, Smith-Bernal received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Innovation. Following the sale of Opus 2 in 2017, Smith-Bernal bought

Newsells Park Newsells Park is a country house and estate at Barkway in Hertfordshire. History The estate and the original manor house, built in the late 17th century, was acquired by Admiral Sir John Jennings in 1721 and was his home until he died in 1743. ...

Stud - a commercial

stud farm A stud farm or stud in animal husbandry is an establishment for selective breeding of livestock. The word "stud (animal), stud" comes from the Old English ''stod'' meaning "herd of horses, place where horses are kept for breeding". Historically, ...

North Hertfordshire North Hertfordshire is one of ten local government districts in the county of Hertfordshire, England. Its council is based in Letchworth Garden City and the largest town is Hitchin. The district also includes the towns of Baldock and Royston ...

breeding classic and

Group One Group One, Group 1, Grade I or G1 is the term used for the highest level of Thoroughbred and Standardbred stakes races in many countries. In Europe, the level of races for Thoroughbred racing is determined using the Pattern races, Pattern race sys ...

racehorses.

Personal

Smith-Bernal is married with three children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith-Bernal, Graham 1958 births 21st-century British inventors British racehorse owners and breeders Legal software Living people