Guidance Software launches EnCase Certified eDiscovery Practitioner Program

As you will have gathered from recent posts I am not a supporter of the idea that anyone working in the ediscovery / e-disclosure field must have a certificate to prove their competence. My opposition is based largely on the near-certainty that such a requirement will operate as a bar to new entrants and on the probability that any organisation purporting to offer generalised certification will speedily become a self-perpetuating oligarchy bound up in its own bureaucracy.

I exempted from this opinion the specialised training required for the proper use of highly technical applications – those hiring people who purport to know how to use such products clearly need some evidence that the employee or consultant has reached the developer’s standard of competence, and I cited Guidance Software’s EnCase as an example.

Guidance Software has now supplemented its wide range of training courses with the new EnCase® Certified eDiscovery Practitioner (EnCEP™) program which adds to the bare skills needed to use EnCase by extending out to include planning, project management and best practices in its use. It seems to me to be a logical extension of their application training that EnCase users should understand the legal and the technology context in which EnCase is to be used. This is a step in the right direction.

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New edition of American Legal Technology Insider

The current edition of the American Technology Insider is out, with Charles Christian’s report on ILTA 2009 and some spending statistics which are realistic rather than cheery in the short-term at least. There is also, as always, a succinct summary of the latest industry news.

The American Technology Insider introductory page explains what is covered in ALTi, and how you can get one delivered to your mailbox for free. There is also a section headed “For PR and marketing departments” which makes it clear that ALTi is news-driven rather than led by advertising.

The British version seems to have been  around for ever. The means of publication may have changed but the format and the style remains as it began, probably with a report of the implications for lawyers of Charles Babbage’s planned Differential Engine in 1822. There is no obvious reason to change a formula which works and, more than a year after the launch of the American edition, that formula seems to go down well there as well.

Consistent with its own emphasis on short, snappy reports, the new edition of ALTi carries a quotation from Donna Payne of the Payne Group: “If you can’t demo a product in 15 minutes, you don’t have a product”. The point, I think, is not so much whether you have a product as whether you can get an audience for it. I went round the ILTA booths asking for 15 minute demos. They all seemed a bit taken aback by this, but I have to say that they all rose well to the challenge.

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