Fastcase opens up legal research

It's happening again. Another bloated, proprietary industry is giving way to an "open-source" alternative.

The industry? Legal research.

With an increasing number of legal opinions online, rather than locked behind LexisNexis or Westlaw, Fastcase was bound to arise. Fastcase is an up-and-coming competitor to these locked-down, expensive services, offering access to a large legal database at a fraction of the cost. Fastcase still needs to scan and index all the legal opinions still held in books, but this is something that an offshore team can do at a low price.

Fastcase won't unseat Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw anytime soon, just as open-source software alternatives aren't putting anyone out of business today. But the writing is on the wall, according to a June 30 Forbes article released online this week:

Bigger law firms will continue to use Westlaw and Lexis for a long time. The established vendors have the most current and comprehensive databases, and, says Thomas Fleming, lawyers know them best....[Fleming's] firm uses Fastcase for quick searches and to cross-check citations, but he says it has a "phenomenal niche" serving smaller firms that can't afford Wexis.

Niche today, market dominance tomorrow. That's the way the open-source song goes...

[michael_o]

This is an interesting company. I don't know why Google doesn't just index the law though. They've done much bigger scan and index jobs and the part that matters -- the opinions and statutes -- are all non-copyrighted. FastCase charges less, but it seems like access to this information should be free: we already paid for it when we paid taxes to fund the court system.

[richhag]

Thanks for sharing, Matt. Their rate is half the rate the state has negotiated with Westlaw for all state employees. I'm going to check it out and see if we can switch.

[shmooth2]

who are their competitors? there are other folks doing this?

[a403n]

Nice article..