Fastcase customer support will be closed in observance of Memorial Day. Regular hours will resume at 8:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, May 28.

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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.

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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. Our new feature, “Bad Law Bot,” uses algorithms to find negative citation history. [...]

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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 – [...]

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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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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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

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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 [...]

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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. [...]

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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.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings list and [...]

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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. As you can imagine, this usually leads to [...]

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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, [...]

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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 will be interesting to see if [...]

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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. This information is [...]

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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. Though [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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

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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 [...]

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