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  • InsideTrack
  • May 18, 2016

    Member Benefit Spotlight: Fastcase Brings Legal Research to Your Fingertips

    Take advantage of everything the State Bar of Wisconsin offers you. Do you know all the benefits you receive as a member of the State Bar? Enhance your legal practice with Fastcase, one of many member benefits brought to you by the State Bar.

    June 1, 2016 – Fastcase is a leading, next-generation legal research service that puts a comprehensive national law library – with powerful search, sort, and visualization tools – on your computer or mobile device.

    The State Bar of Wisconsin offers free access to Fastcase as part of your member benefits package – with no restrictions. In addition to traditional search, this legal research service offers advanced search and visualization tools to help you find the citations you need more efficiently.

    What does Fastcase deliver?

    • 50 state and federal case law databases

    • Federal, district, bankruptcy, and tax courts

    • Federal and state statutes, regulations, constitutions, and court rules

    • Unlimited dual-column case printing

    • Authority check for related authorities

    What does this mean? You get unlimited usage, unlimited customer service, unlimited free printing of search results, and one-stop convenience. Fastcase compiles the search results for you, works on web-based and mobile platforms, provides daily updates, and includes both official citations and citations to commercial reporters.

    Authority Check

    Authority Check uses Bad Law Bot, an algorithm that searches for and flags cases with negative citation history and provides links to those cases. Although Bad Law Bot is not intended to be a complete replacement for a full editorial citator, it flags all cases that have been overturned and subsequently cited by another court opinion.

    Fastcase alone is worth the membership dues. – State Bar Past President Robert Gagan

    Two Great Things, Together at Last

    For years, Fastcase’s Interactive Timeline has plotted search results on a graph, allowing you to quickly identify the most-cited cases and see the relationships between them. Forecite identified potentially significant cases that were not included in your search results and alerted you to them. To make the most of each tool, Fastcase has now combined these two features, allowing you to see Forecite results in your Interactive Timeline.

    There’s an App for That: Take Fastcase with You

    Take smarter research on the go with Fastcase apps for iOS and Android. Use the app to search case law and statutes, customize and re-sort search results, and use any of the integrated citation analysis tools. Then sync your mobile apps with your main account to bring together your favorites and search history. You can save cases on the go, then access them at your desktop where it’s easy to print or find expanded search information.

    I’ve been using Fastcase exclusively for probably about five years now. – Johanna Kirk, Superior

    Still Have Questions – or Want to Know More?

    Take a look at Fastcase’s FAQ, and sign up for helpful webinars and CLE on Fastcase’s website. And visit the State Bar booth for a demo at the 2016 Annual Meeting & Conference, June 16-17, in Green Bay.

    For more information about Fastcase, including available training opportunities, please contact Kristin Huotari at (608) 250-6152 or khuotari@wisbar.org.


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