Free Fastcase arrives for State Bar members

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This past Halloween was probably a particularly scary day for representatives of Westlaw and LexisNexis working with Wisconsin practitioners.

That’s because Oct. 31 marked the State Bar of Wisconsin’s roll-out of its newest, and by far most significant, member benefit: It launched free access to Fastcase for bar members — undoubtedly leaving Lexis and Westlaw reps speechless in response to the question, “Why should I pay beaucoup bucks for your service, when Fastcase is free?”

If you’ve not heard of Fastcase, it’s one of the many upstarts seeking to topple the two legal research giants.

A couple of months ago, I talked to law librarian Mary J. Koshollek, of Godfrey & Kahn S.C. in Milwaukee, about Fastcase for an article about alternatives to Westlaw and Lexis.

Although none of the competitors can match them with regard to the sheer volume of materials, Koshollek nonetheless gave Fastcase a thumbs-up. She praised its Google-like searchablity, clean interface and extensive customer service and help options.

An area for improvement, however, was that its Wisconsin statutes merely linked the user to the state’s Legislative Reference Bureau statutes database. Koshollek and I agreed that this free, public resource is not exactly easy to use.

Great news! Edward Walters, Fastcase’s CEO, recently told me that as of Nov. 1, Fastcase would be releasing enhanced searching of not only the Wisconsin Statutes, but also, the state administrative code, court rules, constitution and attorney general opinions, as well as searchable IRS Revenue Rulings. And, more searchable state statutes, for states other than Wisconsin, are in the works for next year.

Search results are listed by “relevance,” which, according to Walters, is determined by an algorithm — not human editors, as used by Lexis and Westlaw. It counts the “numerosity, proximity, density, and diversity” of the search terms in each case. But you can also sort search results in other ways, bringing the most recent case or the most often-cited cases to the top of the list.

However, humans can come in handy for something — namely, for citators. Fastcase’s Authority Check citator doesn’t match the accuracy of Shepard’s and Keycite. These are available transactionally for about $4.

Per a June 30, 2008 Forbes article on Fastcase, the company has made inroads with state bars by forming relationships with them to offer Fastcase as a member benefit, for as little as $2 per member. That compares to $65-$95 per month, if you were to subscribe individually.

“I guess it’s true often enough that you get what you pay for — but Fastcase isn’t a free service; it’s one of the most expensive outside of West and Lexis,” said Walters. “When the Wisconsin Bar partners with us to offer it for free, I think it’s going to be hard to find much more value further down the food chain.”

OpenOffice.org Releases Version 3.0

October was a big month for OpenOffice.org fans as well, with its release of version 3.0 on the 13th.

OpenOffice.org is a suite of productivity tools comparable to Microsoft Office. The biggest difference, at least in my frugal and not too techy mind, is price; OpenOffice is open source software that’s free to download and use, while Microsoft Office will set you back $499 before tax.

I previously talked to Ron K. Phillips, of the Phillips Law Group S.C. in Milwaukee, about OpenOffice. We revisited the topic last week, and he remains a fan, for many reasons.

For starters, he said that OpenOffice can read and write the same file formats that Microsoft Office uses. You can share files between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office seamlessly.

OpenOffice can also import all of the templates you might have used with Microsoft Office, and has a template organizer that makes it easy to find the right template. Unlike Microsoft Office, OpenOffice lets you have templates stored in more than one folder, which makes sharing templates on a network folder very easy.

Phillips said the revision tracking feature of earlier versions of OpenOffice Writer had been a substantial difference between the two programs, with Microsoft’s Word having bested Writer, in his estimation. He noted that the OpenOffice developers have closed that gap, however. OpenOffice supports revision tracking, making it possible to have colleagues make markups in a document. Those changes are displayed with change bars and highlighted text so it is clear what changes were made. You can even add a comment to a change. That comment is displayed when you are reviewing the changes. Any changes can be accepted and merged into the document, or rejected.

Phillips also applauded the support for PDF throughout the OpenOffice suite, which eclipses Word 2007’s PDF capabilities. The PDF support in OpenOffice allows you to create a PDF file when sending an electronic file that might otherwise carry confidential metadata. Because PDF files only contain instructions for displaying the contents (and not, for example, comments or versioning information), PDFs are a smart option for avoiding breaches of confidentiality. For many attorneys, the PDF support in OpenOffice will save the expense of buying a copy of Adobe Acrobat.

With OpenOffice.org, customer support is free for “community members,” which individuals become when they download it, but it comes at a price for commercial organizations. It’s not too likely that you’ll be opening your wallet for that, according to Phillips, because the online help, several books and hundreds of online resources provide a wealth of information for those motivated to look for it. He also strongly recommends “OOo Switch,” a very handy paperback that is packed with recipes for making OpenOffice do all the things you used to do in Microsoft Office.