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Major Upgrade Coming to Legal Research Member Benefit
By Ed Walters
The OBA has contracted with Fastcase since 2006 to offer complimentary legal research to its membership. All OBA members have free access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research service, including cases, statutes, regulations, court rules and constitutions for all 50 states plus federal. The service includes reference attorney support by phone or chat, unlimited searching and printing. While this service normally costs $1,145 per year, Oklahoma attorneys can access it at no cost as a part of their existing bar membership.
A free legal research benefit may sound too good to be true, but Fastcase was founded in 1999 with the mission of democratizing the law and making the practice of law smarter. The service was founded by lawyers who wanted to make access to the law a cornerstone of practice, not a privilege reserved for the largest law firms. Working with bar associations in nearly every state, Fastcase has made legal research available to more than 1.1 million lawyers in the United States.
A MERGER OF STRENGTH ON STRENGTH
In 2023, Fastcase merged with vLex, which had been pushing in parallel to democratize the law in the rest of the world since 2000. The two companies share a common mission, and both are veterans of the legal profession. However, while Fastcase was building a deep library of legal materials in the United States, vLex was founded in Spain and worked to democratize the law in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
The combination was a perfect fit and formed one of the world’s largest law libraries – it has more than 1 billion documents from over 110 countries and more than 3 million subscribers. Veteran legal journalist Bob Ambrogi said the merger would “reshape the legal research and legal technology landscape on a global basis.”
This merger makes your OBA member benefit more valuable than ever. The merged company continues its mission to work with state bar associations to make legal research an included part of bar membership for lawyers. The Fastcase legal research service will be called vLex Fastcase in the United States, while the global corporate name will remain vLex. However, the mission for both companies is the same: to ensure that people win or lose cases based on who has the law on their side, not on who can afford to find out whether the law is on their side.
A BIG UPGRADE FOR OBA MEMBERS
The new version of the OBA member benefit from vLex Fastcase will offer some significant upgrades:
- Cert citator. Is your case still good law? vLex Fastcase will include the robust Cert citator, a combination of AI and a human editorial review of more than 700,000 citations. The teams have been working on the citator for four years, researching, developing and testing. The result is a new citator that is more powerful than ever.
- Vincent AI. vLex Fastcase will include some of the features of the Vincent AI platform from vLex. Vincent uses artificial intelligence to create headnotes for judicial opinions and find references. It also provides tools to translate research into other languages, which can be very helpful for advising clients whose native language is not English. In addition, some of the power tools from Vincent AI will be available for an additional monthly subscription, such as AI-powered research, draft memos, redlines, reviewing contracts, drafting briefs, mergers and acquisitions due diligence and much more.
- A sleek, new interface. The new vLex Fastcase features a more streamlined, easier-to-read design to make research simpler and more accessible – for experts and beginners alike.
- The same member benefit but better. vLex Fastcase still includes free access to up-to-date judicial opinions, statutes, regulations and more for Oklahoma and the other 49 states, as well as federal. If you subscribe to secondary publications or the briefs and pleadings database, those subscriptions will move with you to the new platform.
To use vLex Fastcase, go to your MyOKBar account and click the "vLex Fastcase" link in the box at the top of the page. That will log you in directly to your personalized start page in Fastcase.
The OBA has offered online legal research software as a free benefit to members for many years. The new release of vLex Fastcase will be an important step forward in continuing to improve this service. vLex Fastcase will make it easier for members to prepare work for clients, improving an already great legal research service.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Walters serves as the chief strategy officer at vLex and is the co-founder of Fastcase.
Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal – OBJ 95 No. 9 (November 2024)
Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff.