The Oklahoma Bar Journal November 2024

Major Upgrade Coming to Legal Research Member Benefit WRITTEN BY: ED WALTERS

A Merger Of Strength On Strength In 2023, Fastcase merged with vLex, which had been push ing in parallel to democratize the law in the rest of the world since 2000. The two compa nies 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 per fect fit and formed one of the world’s largest law libraries – it has more than 1 billion docu ments from over 110 countries and more than 3 million sub scribers. 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 com pany continues its mission to work with state bar associa tions to make legal research an

included part of bar member ship 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 signifi cant upgrades: 1) Cert citator. Is your case

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 democratiz ing the law and making the prac tice 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.

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.

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THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL