An ESI professional is a person who is paid to assist with electronically stored information, and specifically, electronic discovery. An ESI professional is often someone with experience in information technology (IT). Sometimes an ESI professional is an attorney with technical skills, but often an attorney will partner with a person skilled in computer data processing because attorneys rarely have sufficient technical skills and experience to competently do the technical ESI work.

There is no required license, certification, or degree for an ESI professional. However, Kroll Ontrack offers its own certification course. The best ESI professionals are those with experience managing ESI discovery in a large corporation that encounters frequent litigation. For example, Kroll Ontrack’s ESI Consulting team (http://www.krollontrack.com/esiconsultants/) includes ESI professionals with backgrounds in large heavy-litigated corporations.