The merged company vLex Fastcase is preparing to launch a new interface that includes an editorial citator called Cert
BY ED WALTERS
The Washington State Bar Association has partnered with Fastcase since 2019 to offer complimentary legal research to its members. If you’re a member of the WSBA, you get free access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research service—federal and state cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions, plus free reference attorney support by phone or chat and unlimited searching and printing—a service that normally costs $1,145 per year but is included as a benefit of membership in the WSBA.
Fastcase was founded in 1999 with the mission to democratize the law and to make 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 in the world. Working with bar associations in almost every state, the company has made legal research available to more than 1.1 million lawyers across the United States.
A Merger of Strength With Strength
In 2023, Fastcase merged with vLex, a global legal intelligence platform in operation since 2000. The two companies share a common mission—to democratize legal knowledge. And while Fastcase was building a deep library of legal materials in the United States, vLex, founded in Spain, was doing the same to serve lawyers throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
The combination is a perfect fit and together the two companies form one of the world’s largest law libraries, with more than 1 billion documents from more than 110 countries and more than 3 million subscribers. Legal journalist Bob Ambrogi said that the merger would “reshape the legal research and legal technology landscape on a global basis.”11 www.lawnext.com/2023/04/in-major-legal-tech-deal-vlex-and-fastcase-merge-creating-a-global-legal-research-company-backed-by-oakley-capital-and-bain-capital.html.
A Big Upgrade for WSBA Members
This merger makes the WSBA free member benefit better than ever. The combined company continues its mission to work with state bar associations to make legal research an included part of license fees for legal professionals. The Fastcase legal research service will be called vLex Fastcase in the United States, while the global corporate name remains vLex. The mission for both companies remains the same—to ensure that people win or lose cases based on who has the law on their side, not based on who can afford to find out whether the law is on their side.
The new vLex Fastcase will offer some significant upgrades to members:
- Cert citator. Is your case still good law? vLex Fastcase will include the robust Cert citator, a combination of AI and human review of more than 700,000 citations. Technical teams have been working on the citator for four years, in research, development, and testing phases. The result is a new citator that is more powerful than ever.
- Vincent AI. vLex Fastcase will include some of the features of the vLex Vincent AI platform in the free member benefit: Vincent uses artificial intelligence to create headnotes for judicial opinions, find references similar to the document you’re reading, and translate research into other languages, which can be helpful for advising clients for whom English is not their first language. Additional tools from Vincent AI will be available at a monthly subscription cost, such as AI-powered research, drafting of memos and briefs, redlining, reviewing contracts, M&A due diligence, and more.
- 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.
- Continued access to your subscriptions. If you subscribe to WSBA deskbooks, secondary publications, or the briefs and pleadings database on the Fastcase platform, those subscriptions will move with you to the new platform.
The process for logging in to the research benefit will not change. Visit the WSBA website at http://www.wsba.org, click “Legal Research” in the menu at the top of the page, and log in with your myWSBA username and password. You will be directed to your personalized start page in Fastcase, with the option to complete the onboarding process. You will also have the option to move your saved documents and search history over to the new platform. Starting in October, you’ll be receiving email communications from the WSBA to help you explore the new vLex Fastcase platform with access to webinars and online tutorials.
The WSBA has offered legal research as a free benefit to members for many years. The release of the new vLex Fastcase platform will make it easier than ever to prepare work for clients, improving an already great legal research service.
About the author
Ed Walters is the chief strategy officer of vLex and the co-founder of Fastcase, a legal intelligence company based in Miami, Florida. He is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and at The University of Chicago, where he teaches Generative AI and BigLaw.
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