Fastcase is offering subscription access to two online legal research platforms. Both allow legal research to be performed over a comprehensive 50-state and federal database of primary and secondary law. The core platform is intended for general use by lawyers, law firms, corporations, schools, and government entities. The corrections platform is specially designed to provide service to correctional institutions.
For 25 years Fastcase has championed the mission of democratizing the law. We believe that meaningful access to justice is impossible unless all people have free and effective access to the law, and very few people do. As a first step in solving this problem, Fastcase has partnered with bar associations in most states to provide attorneys with no-cost access to the Fastcase legal research system. For example, we have been a partner of the State Bar of Texas, providing a legal research benefit to them for over 20 years.
Fastcase also sells subscriptions directly to law firms, including many on the Am Law 200 List, as well as law schools, corporations, state and local government agencies, and other entities with a need for the latest case law, statutes, codes, and regulations. Via this webpage, special pricing is available to Texas state and local entities to our core legal research platform.
A special area of focus for us is the corrections market. There may be no population with greater legal needs, and fewer resources, than inmates and other detained or incarcerated individuals. Fastcase enables inmates in more than 1,000 county jails and state departments of corrections to conduct legal research so that they can identify, defend, and appeal for their rights on our secure platform specifically designed for use in jails and prisons. We are providing via this website special pricing for our corrections platform as well. The corrections platform has some differences from our core legal research platform, as will be described below.
Both platforms include a vast collection of primary and secondary legal materials, including federal case law and cases from all 50 states, as well as federal and 50-state statutes, codes, and regulations. Our interface is designed for ease of use, even for novices. Users can search databases using natural language and Boolean search logic, search multiple databases at the same time, and sort research results by relevance, date, alphabetical order, or number of times a reference is cited. Citation histories are updated daily, with “red flag” warnings for negative citations to help users avoid citing bad law. We provide instructional user guides and quick reference guides, recorded training videos, and can conduct training webinars for end users.
Our core, non-corrections platform allows downloading in a variety of formats. Users can download single documents of most materials as either Adobe .pdf or Microsoft Word .docx files. Bulk downloading options are also available, allowing users to amass research materials throughout the course of their work, then download the collected documents as a single file in the format of their choice. Case law is available for download in traditional dual-column format. At the request of correctional institutions, our corrections platform does not allow downloading.
Secondary legal sources include legal dictionaries (in English and Spanish), as well as criminal and civil legal treatises. For correctional facilities, “The Jailhouse Lawyer Handbook” and “A Jailhouse Lawyer Manual” can expediently assist inmates with their questions and appeals. We are especially proud to offer with our corrections application a broad collection of criminal and civil law publications from Nolo Press, written with plain-English explanations that allow non-lawyers to understand and apply the law, and create useful legal documents. In correctional facilities especially, primary and secondary law materials can be important tools for the appeal of cases, but can be difficult for non-attorneys to understand.
Our corrections platform is a secure, web-based solution that will work with nearly any network configuration or machine type desired by a corrections agency, including tablets, kiosks, and thin client personal computers. We also have long-standing relationships and integrations with virtually all major telephone, commissary, tablet, and other equipment vendors in the corrections market. Indeed, some of these vendors exclusively provide Fastcase as a law library to their partners. These relationships are important because the provider of an electronic law library must work with these vendors to physically deliver the library.
An important feature of our corrections application is that it is “locked down.” For correctional facilities, all external links are disabled, so that users are unable to leave the secure application to access the internet. This technology has proven fully secure in more than 1,000 correctional facilities nationwide. There is an exceedingly simple integration for correctional facilities as well. -- we simply whitelist IP addresses. There is nothing to configure.
To obtain quotes and place purchase orders, please contact the following:
For government agencies (other than corrections), schools, and all other non-corrections inquiries -
Jason Enders (612) 469-1030 Account Executive [email protected]
For corrections inquiries -
Elaine Honeycutt (434) 242-4666 Account Manager, Corrections [email protected]
Fastcase’s contract with the DIR is reference number DIR-CPO-5254.
To learn more about the DIR's Cooperative Contracts, please click here.
Because Fastcase offers subscription-based software-as-a-service applications, returns are not available.