Contributing to the democratization of access to legal information and of work processes in law is a fundamental objective of the Centre. Such democratization can increase the quality of justice, fairness, judicial economy and political support for justice. This objective underpins the open access publication programme of the FICHL and the emphasis on knowledge-transfer and legal empowerment in the activities of the CMN. Innovation has been at the heart of the activities of the Centre and its departments since their start. An essential component of this has been information technology and legal informatics. The Centre therefore has its own Legal Informatics Section.

The Section is led by Ralph Hecksteden. He is a German lawyer and programmer with years of experience from the University of Saarland, the German Federal Constitutional Court and the German Federal Ministry of Justice. He is the technical developer of the Case Matrix. He received the 2008 Dieter Meurer Award for Legal Informatics for this work together with Morten Bergsmo.

Mathias Gisch also serves in the Section. He is the technical developer of the Legal Tools Database and Website (see http://www.legal-tools.org), of this web site, and of the sub-sites of the CMN and FICHL.