Legal publishers Casemaker and Fastcase today announce their merger and joint building out of legal research and analytics, news, data, and workflow …
Legal Research Companies Casemaker and Fastcase Merge
COVID, wildfires, court operations, and closures dominated headlines and our lives. So did the tech world, the hard work of staying productive, and not letting the stress of it all get to us.
Hopefully you found some useful posts in 2020. If you’ve been battling procrastination, there is help. If you need to jump start your marketing, I did a four part series in July. If collecting fees has been … challenging … I have a few suggestions. Here’s a recap of substantive topics covered in the past twelve months. And here’s to 2021!
All Rights Reserved 2020 Beverly Michaelis
From our friend The Researching Paralegal, a great legal research tip!
Westlaw has added an important search term, the carat (^) (shift 6 on your keyboard). This allows you to put more emphasis on a search term. To use it, place the carat symbol right behind the term you want emphasized.
Here is a further explanation from Cleveland Marshall College of Law Library Blog:
You can use the caret in the main search box or in Search Within Results. An example of a search is:
liability /p (park^ or recreation or camp!)
This would place the emphasis on the term “park” and your results will be somewhat different if you run the search with or without the caret.
You can read more about Search Term Emphasis in the Search Tips document that you’ll find linked to the right of the main search box in Westlaw.
Find the caret symbol above the 6 key on a standard qwerty keyboard. Not to be confused with the carrot.
As The Researching Paralegal reminds us – If you need a refresher on Westlaw Edge, check this out:
Westlaw’s Guide to Law Review Research.
All Rights Reserved 2020 Beverly Michaelis
One of the more interesting ideas discussed at ABA TECHSHOW was the concept of crowdsourcing legal research using Casetext or Mootus:
“On Casetext, judicial opinions and statutes are annotated with analysis by prominent law professors and attorneys at leading firms, giving you unique insight. And everything is 100% free.”
Mootus “…helps law students and lawyers at all levels build reputation and knowledge through competitive, collaborative legal argument.
Okay … but what is it exactly?
Here are three quick answers curated from the 2014 ABA TECHSHOW:
It turns out that crowdsourcing isn’t exactly new. Bob Ambrogi first wrote about it in 2010 for the Oregon State Bar Bulletin. See “Crowdsourcing the Law: Trends and Other Innovations.”
Here is Bob’s more recent take on Casetext, which I recommend you read if you are at all interested in this approach to research. In a very rudimentary way, think of it as Fastcase + Wikipedia together in one place. Here is a snippet from Bob’s post:
“But what makes the site unique is the ability of its users to add descriptions and annotations to the cases. When you view a case, the screen is divided in half. On the left side, what you first see is a section of “Quick Facts” about the case — its holding, citation, court, judges, docket number and the like. After that comes a section called “Case Wiki” with a more narrative description of the case. Following those two sections comes the case itself.
Both of those first two sections — Quick Facts and Case Wiki — are fully editable by registered users. Simply click the “edit” button and revise or supplement any of the text. Click the “revisions” button to see the full history of edits by all users.
Similarly, the right side of the screen contains sections for “tags,” “cases,” “sources,” “analysis,” and “record.” Users can create and edit any of these items.”
Thank you Bob Ambrogi!
When is the last time you used the PLF publication In Brief as a resource in your practice? Did you know that In Brief addresses 23 areas of practice plus civil procedure, cases of note, malpractice traps, and practice management tips?
Our archive of informative articles is fully searchable online and free to all Oregon lawyers. Login to www.osbplf.org > In Brief or check out our Index of Articles.
Oregon Law Practice Management 