Partner Earns Privacy Law Specialist Certification from the American Bar Association
Susan Tillotson Bunch is among the inaugural class of newly approved Privacy Law Specialists among the American Bar Association’s certification program.
Thomas & LoCicero PL is pleased to announce that Susan Tillotson Bunch, a partner practicing in its Tampa office, has earned the Privacy Law Specialist (“PLS”) certification by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, “IAPP,” the organization accredited by the American Bar Association to certify lawyers in this new specialty area of Privacy Law. Ms. Bunch is in the inaugural class of successful applicants for the newly approved PLS certification since it was announced by the ABA earlier this year.
Privacy Law is the 15th specialty accredited by the ABA and certification is restricted to US lawyers meet the IAPP’s rigorous specialist designation requirements in this crucial and rapidly growing area of the law. Specifically, to earn the specialist certification, Ms. Bunch was required to earn and hold the Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States, “CIPP/US”, designation from the IAPP, as well as either the Certified Information Business Management, “CIBM”, or Certified Information Privacy Technologist, “CIPT” designation. Ms. Bunch holds all three.
In addition, certification required Ms. Bunch to demonstrate substantial and ongoing involvement in privacy law practice, substantiated by no fewer than five peer references from attorneys, clients or judges attesting to her privacy law experience, satisfy substantial privacy-law related continuing legal education requirements, and pass the PLS Ethics Exam administered by the IAPP.
As noted above, Ms. Bunch also maintains the CIPP/US, CIPM and CIPT certifications from the IAPP. The CIPP, CIPM, and CIPT designations are the most coveted privacy certifications available for thousands of professionals around the world who serve the data protection, information auditing, information security, legal compliance, and risk management needs of their organizations. The IAPP’s certifications are accredited by the American National Standards Institute.
The Privacy Law Specialist (PLS) certification is offered by the American Bar Association, which has accredited IAPP to administer this new certification. This is not a certification by The Florida Bar.
The International Association of Privacy Professionals is the world’s largest association of privacy professionals with more than 25,000 members across 83 countries. The IAPP is a not-for-profit association that helps to define and support the privacy profession globally.
With offices in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Thomas & LoCicero is a Florida law firm that is widely known, respected and committed to free speech and a free press. The firm represents the industry’s leading electronic and traditional publishers, as well as individual journalists, bloggers and influencers of social media on issues ranging from news gathering to invasion of privacy, from defamation to pre-publication review. At the heart of the firm’s mission is to champion free speech and defend journalism every day.
