Alerts

The first was something new on the search results page—an Add Alert option.  When you click the Add Alert button, you are saving your search and asking Fastcase to alert you by email whenever new documents are added to Fastcase that match your search terms. To cancel your alert, go to Options | Manage Alerts.

Annotated Statues

Fastcase's annotated statutes project is now up to 37 states (plus the US Code).  They will continue to add annotations to other states' statutes.   
   
     

Copy with Citation

Another new feature at Fastcase is the  “copy with citation” option. When you select text in a case or statute, etc., a small menu pops up with the option to include the document’s citation when you copy the text.

Partnership with HeinOnline

On July 9, 2013, William S. Hein & Co. and Fastcase announced a new partnership. HeinOnline subscribers will soon be able to hyperlink to Fastcase’s federal and state case law anytime a case is mentioned in a publication hosted at HeinOnline (primarily law journals and historical state statutory materials). In addition, HeinOnline subscribers will be able to access Fastcase’s citation tool (Authority Check) and its new “Bad Law Bot” (which identifies negative citation history of published opinions; and we previously wrote about here)—all for free.

And, on the flip-side, Fastcase will integrate HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library (over 1,800 titles back to their first volumes), Session Laws Library, State Attorney General Reports and Opinions, and State Statutes: A Historical Archive and historical state statutory materials, into Fastcase search results. However, Fastcase users will only be able to view HeinOnline’s list of results and its abstracts for free. To access the full articles, Fastcase subscribers would also have to subscribe to HeinOnline. Bar associations will also have the option to add the Hein material to their member benefit.

The integrated libraries are supposed to be available on both services at the end of the summer.

The post Fastcase Offers New Features and Services appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Recently, in response to query on Twitter, we created a Google-powered search of Pennsylvania statutes. This got us thinking about other states that offered access to their statutes online, but did not offer the full flexibility and/or familiar search options offered by Google's Web search. 

So, we started poking around a bit, looking for other state statutory materials onto which we might superimpose a Google-powered search. Our second Google-powered statute search covers Texas's statues and Constitution.

The Texas legislature offers an excellent search option for its statutes and Constitution at http://linkon.in/dqLvV5. There, you can browse or search the entire Code, or search individual Titles or the Constitution. Your keywords are even highlighted in the search results. While the Texas Legislature search does a nice job with Boolean and phrase searching, our test searches seemed to indicate that one weakness was in the exclusionary AND NOT/BUT NOT search - particularly when trying to exclude a phrase.

The Google-powered search we created for Texas statutes and Constitution allows for the exclusionary search using the minus sign ( - ).

Based on the dozen or so test searches we ran setting the search up, it seems to catch all of the statutes' content - but all of the usual caveats/disclaimers apply.

Let us know if you find any Titles in particular it does not return.

Google-Powered Search of Texas Statues and Constitution

The post Google-powered Search of the Texas Statutes (and Constitution) appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.