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Legal News

Fastcase Legal News

Covers items of interest for lawyers and other legal professionals, legal technology, legal research, firm life, and culture.

Post Frequency: 6.7/day

Last Entry: May 09, 2013 at 16:30:50

Flattening the Legal Tower of Babel

Posted on May 09, 2013
Fastcase president Philip J. Rosenthal, speaking at the April 3, 2013 LexThink.1 conference in Chicago. To see the other presentations, visit the LexThink.1 page.

Meet our newest team member, Bad Law Bot!

Posted on April 24, 2013
We?ve enhanced our Authority Check feature to show you where courts have noted that a case has been treated negatively (i.e., reversed or overruled on any grounds). The Bluebook requires that courts indicate negative history of cases cited within opinions...

New! State Supreme Court Cases back to 1879: Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska

Posted on April 22, 2013
Supreme Court and Court of Appeals cases in the North Western Reporter are now available on Fastcase going back to 1879 (Volume 1 of the North Western Reporter, First Series). Until recently, cases were available going back to 1950. Expanded coverage includes: Supreme Court of Wisconsin: 1879 – Present Supreme Court of Iowa: 1879 – [...

Friday links roundup

Posted on April 19, 2013
Our picks for this week’s legal news and articles of interest: Attorney At Work wonders whether business cards are “an anachronism in a digital world.” Even pre-law students know the job market is tough right now and some students are already planning on using their law degrees in another field after law school, according to this [...

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Friday links roundup

Posted on April 12, 2013
Here are some quick links to stories we’ve been watching over the last week. Google announced its Inactive Account Manager, which allows family or friends to access your account after a predetermined period of inactivity. FutureLawyer reminds us that Inactive Account Manager is not a substitute for a will! Judge Posner offers advice to appellate [...

Friday links roundup

Posted on April 05, 2013
It’s finally starting to feel like spring here in D.C.! It’s also Friday, so we’re all ready to be outside enjoying the weather. If you’re cooped up in the office, take a quick break and check out some of these stories! A fantastic Question of the Week from the ABAJournal: Have you ever accepted [...

Who Owns The Law?

Posted on April 03, 2013
Ed Walters, Fastcase CEO, speaking at the March 8, 2013 ReInventLaw Silicon Valley 2013 conference. To learn more about ReInventLaw, visit their website here.

Farewell to Things You Can?t Do on a Plane

Posted on April 02, 2013
Bruce Carton has ended his tenure at the Legal Blog Watch, meaning that we’ll no longer have a place that tells us what Things You Can’t Do on a Plane or answers to our burning legal questions. While we’ll miss his quirky take on the intersection of law and daily life, we look forward to more [...

Speed up your statutes research

Posted on March 28, 2013
If you’re looking for a particular act in the statutes, try searching for the act name in quotation marks. The quotation marks will narrow down your results to only those that have the act name exactly as you’ve typed it in. In the example below, we’ve searched for the ?Online Child Safety Act” in Illinois...

Fixing the Legal Profession

Posted on March 13, 2013
Lately, the legal profession has taken a beating from all sides. Everything, from ranking schools to the law school model and beyond, is being scrutinized. We?ve rounded up links to just a few of the many interesting ideas. ?Pop Goes the Law? examines the U...

Legal research is only half the battle

Posted on February 21, 2013
So you?ve completed your legal research on Fastcase. Now it?s time to start drafting that letter, motion or brief. If you?re like me, sometimes you find yourself going on and on and trying to anticipate every argument opposing counsel or the court might dream up...

Who owns the TwitPics?

Posted on February 15, 2013
When I first read this Lexology article about copyright and pictures on Twitter, I thought of the classic property case Pierson v. Post. You might remember it as the ?Who owns the fox?? case. In Pierson v. Post, a hunter named Post was pursuing a fox, and during the chase, Pierson stepped in, [...

Your (online) presence is requested

Posted on February 13, 2013
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog (subscription required) and ABA Journal bring us news that technology has finally entered the courtroom. Or, rather, connected the bedroom to the courtroom. An elderly, bedridden man was allowed to testify against his estranged wife using Skype rather than in person...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times?to go to law school

Posted on February 05, 2013
It’s no secret that the legal market has been in a decline. There?s the high cost of law school and the lack of jobs after graduation, both of which have been discussed in legal circles as well as the mainstream media, as in this January 31 New York Times article...

Pledging allegiance to politeness

Posted on January 29, 2013
Lawyers have a reputation for being argumentative and aggressive. While the practice of law is almost by its very nature adversarial, some feel that the “good guys v. bad guys” approach has gone too far. The Wall Street Journal documented a group of lawyers who want to bring civility back to the courtroom...

Pleaded or Pled? A quick look at the numbers

Posted on January 24, 2013
There?s been a lot of discussion on legal blogs and news sites over the last week or so about the correct past-tense form of plead, probably spurred by this article on LTN. Does proper style mandate pleaded, and is it ever acceptable to use pled? There are good arguments on both sides, to be sure, [...

Giving a whole new meaning to ?deskbooks?

Posted on January 23, 2013
Despite the popularity of online legal research, we still believe in the beauty and power of the casebook! Perkins Coie LLP recently remodeled its Seattle office and repurposed some of its print books into an amazing reference desk. We often think of case law as a pillar of the American legal system but [...

MLK Day holiday

Posted on January 17, 2013
Fastcase customer support will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and regular hours will resume on Tuesday the 21st.

Holiday Customer Service Hours

Posted on December 21, 2012
From our whole team in Washington D.C., we’d like to wish you and your family a warm season’s greeting. If you find yourself doing some research over the next couple weeks, please note our holiday customer support hours: Monday, December 24th: 8am-5pm Eastern Tuesday, December 25th: Closed Wednesday, December 26th: 8am-8pm Eastern (normal customer support hours) Monday, December [...

Three ways to control legal research costs by using Fastcase (even if you have another research provider)

Posted on November 21, 2012
This week, the ABA Journal noted that as clients have become more cost-conscious, some are refusing to pay for research costs. Of course, you still have to conduct the legal research, but consider how using Fastcase can help minimize those non-recoverable costs...

NLJ / Legal Times Regulatory Summit in Washington DC, December 6

Posted on November 15, 2012
Now that the election season is behind us, what’s in store for federal regulations?� The National Law Journal and Legal Times will explore these questions and more in a day-long summit in Washington, DC on December 6, featuring former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, and a host of prominent former members of congress, including Louisiana [...

Fastcase Resources for Hurricane Sandy

Posted on November 02, 2012
Many lawyers on the East Coast have had their lives and practices disrupted by Hurricane Sandy.� As of Friday, Nov. 2, many are still without power, with significant curfews and travel restrictions. During this time, we’re making Fastcase legal research available for free to lawyers affected by the storm...

Sandy Update

Posted on October 30, 2012
It was a very snowy, rainy, windy, day yesterday but it looks like Sandy is starting to die down. We are open today during our usual customer service hours of 8am to 8pm. For immediate live customer assistance please contact us via e-mail at support@fastcase...

Customer Service During Sandy

Posted on October 28, 2012
We at Fastcase are bracing ourselves for Sandy’s landfall tomorrow! We will still be available for customer service beginning at 8am Monday, but will also be watching the storm and updating you via this blog with any changes to our regularly scheduled hours so please check back often...

Luminary Award Winners

Posted on October 24, 2012
This month Fastcase had a blast at the NABE Communications Workshop in beautiful Denver, CO. We also had the great honor of presenting the 2012 Luminary Awards winners. We hope that you will join us in congratulating them and take a moment to check out some of their award winning work...

Fastcase Research Tip: Use proximity operators for more precise results

Posted on October 17, 2012
While in Keyword (Boolean) search, you can use multiple proximity (?within?) operators to fine-tune your search. Here?s an example: If I?m looking for cases in all jurisdictions involving the constitutionality of a search of curtilage and would like the cases to mention the word warrant or a form of warrant, I could run a search like this: constitution* [...

3 Ways to Boost Your Legal Research with Authority Check

Posted on October 11, 2012
Authority Check is one of the innovative features included in your Fastcase desktop subscription. It can help you determine whether a case is good law or not by giving you all of the later citing cases along with information about the most recently cited cases and the court levels at which the case has been [...

An illustrated guide to Illinois?s new citation rules

Posted on October 03, 2012
On July 1, 2011, Illinois began using vendor-neutral citations, previously�noted�here. �The John Marshall�Law School has created a helpful and fun�video on using the new citation rules. Thanks to the Legal Writing Prof Blog for the pointer!

Coffee Break

Posted on September 28, 2012
For those of you who didn’t know, it’s National Coffee Day today! To celebrate many places around the country are offering free coffee, a quick Google search will tell you the ones closest to you. Meanwhile at Fastcase we wanted to pay homage to this delectable brew in our own way– with some Smarter Legal [...

Fastcase Search Tips ? Integrated Statute Searching!

Posted on September 26, 2012
(click on image to enlarge) At Fastcase we feel searching state statutes should be as easy as conducting case law research on our system. That is why we are integrating all of our framed statute pages into search interface. You will now be able to bring up statutes by keyword, natural language and citation look up [...

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