Recently on the Advanced Discovery blog, I mentioned my participation on the faculty at the 4th Annual U of Florida Law –EDRM EDiscovery Conference held on the campus of the U of F Levin School of Law campus in Gainesville. Among the many great speakers pictured below you’ll recognize Craig Ball, George Socha of the EDRM, David Horrigan and Rene Laurens of KCura, Niloy Ray of Little Mendelson, Gavin Manes of Avansic, Julie Brown of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease and Rene Martin Audet of Nuix among others.
Canaan Himmlebaum of Advanced Discovery was featured on a panel entitled Who Says TAR is Only for Litigation Giants.
I was on a great panel called Similarity Takes Us Below the Surface with Rene Laurens, Julie Brown and Michael Dalewitz.
But the highlight of the conference was the focus on technical competence with an exciting keynote address on that subject by Craig Ball which was introduced with an even more exciting piece of news by Michele L. Lieberman, the Alachua County Attorney who is also a member of the Executive Council of the City, County and Local Government Law Section of the Florida Bar and is Secretary of the Eighth Judicial Circuit Bar Association.
Ms. Lieberman announced that the Florida State Bar has modified and sent to the Florida Supreme Court for final approval a change to their MCLE standards which requires 3 hours of technical competence training for every three year CLE requirement cycle. Once approved, this will make Florida the first state to require that its attorneys receive continuous ongoing training in order to guarantee their technical competence.
Coming on the heels of the advisory opinion on technical competence by the California Bar, this requirement shows an ongoing awareness by the Bar community of the need for specific technical training. Hopefully it will be the first of many Bars to recognize such a need and take the specific steps necessary to see that such competence exists in the legal community.
Kudos to the Florida Bar and their forward thinking position on this urgent matter.
