Real CIPP/E Prep: An American's Guide to European Data Protection Law And the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

How to Pass the CIPP/E

Santa Clara Law administered an old version of the CIPP exam in January 2015 to over 20 of its law students. Prof. Eric Goldman reports that only half of them passed. Furthermore, he reports, "I didn't see any clear correlation between law school GPA and passage rates."

Prof. Goldman's students agreed that the CIPP is a test of "minutiae." They recommended memorization and recitation to pass. They're right.

I recommend you recite (read out loud) the contents of this book as you work through it.

Why This Book Exists

First, I was unimpressed by IAPP's training materials. The $75, 382-page IAPP book wastes the test-taker's time by drowning them in a deluge of unnecessary detail. Ignore it. Then there's IAPP's $1,000 CIPP/E training. This book discusses my concerns with that training.

Don't worry about going off-brand. IAPP FAQ #7 states, "to maintain accreditation, ISO requires a separation between the IAPP's certification and training departments." And thank God for that.

Second, this book puts the test-taker on equal footing as someone who has $1,000 to spend. Whether IAPP's $1,000 price tag is reasonable is beyond the scope of this book.

Third, many privacy professionals planned to take the CIPP/E after they finished their GDPR implementations. I wanted to help and support them.

About the Author

Gordon Yu, Esq., MBA, CIPP/E, is currently a partner at Westmoreland Partners, LLP, a group of C-level executives who offer integrated financial, operations, and legal advisory services. He also serves as general counsel and CFO of Advancing Women in Product, a nonprofit. He has educated hundreds of executives, professionals, graduates, and undergraduates at the George Washington University, where he earned the top 10% of faculty distinction, as well as his JD and MBA. He has taken and passed many exams, and also written and administered several more.Previous to his current roles, he was chief legal officer of a family of healthcare providers; a Capitol Hill lobbyist; a Manhattan litigation associate at a (then) Global 10 law firm; and a federal employee in both the largest and second largest agencies (Defense and HHS), where he managed a $27M cybersecurity program. He is licensed to practice law in New York, the District of Colorado, the Eastern District of Michigan, and before the United States Supreme Court.