Fastcase Legal Research

In January, Fastcase acquired Docket Alarm, a company that mines federal and state court dockets to provide litigation alerts and case-prediction analytics. (See my coverage here.) In its first update since the acquisition, Fastcase is today announcing that Docket Alarm has now expanded its coverage of state dockets to 11 states,…

I have said before and I continue to believe that for a legal research company to compete against the longstanding dominance of Westlaw and LexisNexis, having secondary content such as treatises and practice guides is the Holy Grail.

Fastcase clearly sees it the same way. It has steadily been building its libraries of secondary…

Fastcase today announced that it has acquired Docket Alarm,  a company that mines federal and state court dockets to provide litigation alerts and case-prediction analytics.

In announcing the acquisition, the company said:

Docket Alarm’s advanced analytical capabilities, customizable real-time litigation alerts, case prediction indicators, and technology-driven research tools complement Fastcase’s quest to

In a post here two months ago, I reported on the launch by legal research service Fastcase of a new publishing arm called Full Court Press that will produce law journals, legal treatises, deskbooks, forms, checklists and workflow tools. At the time, Fastcase also announced the forthcoming arrival of what would be its…

A few weeks ago, in a post here about Fastcase’s addition of blog commentary from the LexBlog Network, I wrote that for any legal research company aiming to compete in the big leagues against the likes of Westlaw and LexisNexis, “secondary content is the Holy Grail.”

Well, in its own quest…

Needless to say, the legal research market has long been dominated by Westlaw and LexisNexis. Even as any number of other legal research platforms have come along, what has continued to distinguish the big two are their libraries of secondary legal materials.

While it is relatively easy for a smaller legal research company…

A brief before and after using Cloud Linking.

The legal research company Fastcase is introducing a new feature today, Cloud Linking, that automatically converts case citations in legal documents into hyperlinks to the full-text cases.

Cloud Linking is notable because the links it creates are public and free — anyone can…

In speaking yesterday to Fastcase CEO Ed Walters about the company’s hiring of Steve Errick as COO, which I wrote about earlier today, I learned about other news of interest from Fastcase.  In July, Fastcase will launch a new, first-of-its-kind product — an artificial intelligence sandbox for law firms.

A sandbox typically…

Legal research company Fastcase today announced that Steve Errick, who was most recently vice president and managing director for research information at LexisNexis, will join the company on July 1 as chief operating officer.

Steve Errick

Ed Walters, Fastcase CEO, told me that Errick is being brought on to help lead…

Westlaw and LexisNexis are typically viewed as the dominant leaders among legal research services. But a recent survey found that Fastcase is in a virtual dead heat with Westlaw and LexisNexis among smaller-firm lawyers.

The just-released information comes from a survey conducted in 2016 by law practice management company Clio. The survey asked…

A week ago, I reported here that that a federal judge in Georgia had dismissed without prejudice Fastcase’s declaratory judgment lawsuit against Casemaker over the latter’s claims of copyright in Georgia state regulations. Yesterday, Fastcase refiled the suit.

The court had dismissed Fastcase’s lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction on two grounds. One was…

[Updated 1/27/17, 11 a.m. Eastern, to add comments of Fastcase CEO Ed Walters.]

A lawsuit by Fastcase against Casemaker that many hoped would define the parameters of copyright in government information has been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

A year ago, Fastcase preemptively filed the declaratory judgment lawsuit against Casemaker…