Fastcase Is a Varied Research Tool
John F. Harkness Jr.
Fastcase, one of the largest online legal research libraries, is available to you as a member benefit of The Florida Bar. Fastcase provides Bar members with free access to Florida primary law with award-winning advanced search features. Bar members can upgrade their service to include nationwide coverage from state and federal courts, state statutes and administrative regulations, as well as court rules, constitutions, and other valuable libraries.
Florida Bar members can log in to Fastcase through the Bar’s website at www.floridabar.org, using their Bar number and password.
Fastcase offers a choice between natural language search, Boolean keyword search, and citation lookup. default, search results are displayed in a traditional list format. However, caselaw search results can also be displayed more visually as an interactive timeline (more on this feature below).
Fastcase provides Bar members with free and unlimited customer support from experienced reference attorneys. Additionally, Fastcase hosts complimentary monthly training webinars and short video tutorials on its website. Bar members can also find the latest tips and tricks on using Fastcase’s many features in the PRI Knowledge Base on the PRI website, www.floridabar.org/PRI.
In addition to extensive law libraries, Fastcase also includes several unique features:
• Data visualization — Only Fastcase includes the interactive timeline, a visual map of search results. Search results in text look all the same, but when you map them, the best answers jump off the page. Interactive timeline lets you graph your search results or citing cases based on date, court-level, number of citations and other metrics so that you can see at a glance which cases are likely to be most helpful.
• Bad Law Bot — Fastcase includes Bad Law Bot, the world’s first big data tool for negative treatment history. When your case has been cited with negative history, Bad Law Bot flags the case.
• Mobile sync — The ABA’s 2013, 2014, and 2015 tech survey showed that Fastcase’s legal research apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices are by far the most popular mobile apps for lawyers. When you sync your app on the desktop, you can save documents on the app to print later from the desktop, share research history across your devices, or create mobile trial notebooks for tablet devices.
• HeinOnline — Fastcase integrates with HeinOnline, the largest library of law reviews in the world, with more than 2,000 American journals going back to the first page — more than double the size of the law review catalog of traditional research providers. Bar members can search the HeinOnline catalog and view results for free. To read individual articles, members can subscribe to Hein at a discount. If you’re already a subscriber to HeinOnline, you can access the journals without an additional purchase.
• Annotated statutes — Fastcase’s statutes include a free annotation service, so you can see how courts have interpreted statute sections. Scroll to the bottom of a statute section to view a list of citing cases.
• Batch printing — You can use Fastcase’s printing utility to print clean copies of cases in Word or PDF format, with one or two columns of text. You can batch print multiple cases, either in a single document, or as a. zip file with each document saved as a separate file. It’s a quick and easy way to pull cases in a format that you can show a judge, opposing counsel, or a client.
In September 2015, Fastcase acquired Loislaw from Wolters Kluwer. That means current Loislaw subscribers can now transition their accounts to Fastcase and get access to Loislaw’s must-have legal research libraries and treatises combined with all of Fastcase’s industry-leading research tools described above. For the moment, that offer is only available to current Loislaw users, but in the future, Fastcase hopes to make Loislaw treatise libraries available as a subscription upgrade to all users, including those accessing the service via their Florida Bar benefit.
Fastcase is continually working to add new features and databases to its service. To access the current scope of Fastcase’s coverage, visit www.fastcase.com/whatisfastcase/coverage. For more information about what is covered by your Florida Bar benefit on Fastcase, visit http://www.fastcase.com/florida.
The Florida Bar is continually adding additional benefits to enhance your membership. For the full list of member benefits available to you visit /memberbenefits.
