FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 10, 2017
Media Contacts:
Jennifer Brand Ransom, Fastcase Media Relations
202.731.2114 | jbransom@brandsolutionsgroup.com
Alameda County Bar Association Provides Access to Largest Online Law Library Through Fastcase Partnership
Members Get Free Access to Online Law Library, Leading Visualization Tools, Mobile Apps and Annotated Statutes
ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA and WASHINGTON, DC (January 10, 2017) – The Alameda County Bar Association and Fastcase today announced the ACBA will be providing its members free access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research system.
Beginning January 1, 2017, approximately 1,500 attorneys, judges, law students, professors and other legal practitioners who are members of the Alameda County Bar Association (ACBA) will receive unlimited access to one of the largest law libraries in the world. The member benefit is unlimited — with no restrictions on time or number of transactions, unlimited printing, unlimited reference assistance and unlimited customer service included for free.
ACBA members will get free access to Fastcase’s California libraries, U.S. Bankruptcy Court decisions, and select federal law libraries which include opinions from the Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit, as well as a newspaper archive, legal forms and a one-stop PACER search of federal filings. The collection also includes statutes and regulations from all 50 states and the federal government. The member benefit provides for free access to Fastcase’s intuitive and smarter legal research tools, training webinars and tutorials, industry-leading mobile apps, and live customer support from members of the Fastcase team.
In addition, members have the opportunity to subscribe individually to the Fastcase nationwide Premium subscription for $195 per member per year (the service normally costs $995 per year).
Members will be able to access Fastcase through the bar’s website at https://alamedacountyb.wpengine.com where they can log in with their bar username and password.
“We are thrilled this partnership allows us to provide free access to legal research for our members and that it benefits all members whether they are attorneys, judges, law clerks, government, or educators in the legal community,” said Tiela Chalmers, CEO of the Alameda County Bar Association. “Fastcase is a critical part of our new campaign to provide significant practice benefits to our members, including free MCLE and significant discounts on practice tools. We’re proud to partner with Fastcase to provide our members with free access to this highly acclaimed research service.”
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Fastcase is the nation’s fastest-growing and most popular legal research service. Many of the nation’s largest law firms and 27 state bar associations have subscribed to Fastcase. More than 800,000 lawyers currently have a subscription to Fastcase, many through their state bar and local associations.
“Access to the law is a fundamental pillar of access to justice,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “We’re proud to partner with the Alameda County Bar Association to make America’s best legal research software available to all members for free. Now everyone has access to the law, and we can together improve access to justice.”
The Fastcase service ordinarily costs $995 per year for an individual subscriber, but the bar members now have access to Fastcase for free as a complimentary member benefit. The Fastcase service is provided at no charge to members, but it is not a discount legal research service. Fastcase has pioneered the smartest legal research tools in the market, with integrated citation analysis tools, data visualization maps of search results and the first legal research apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The service also includes Bad Law Bot, the first big data service to identify negative citations to judicial opinions.
In addition to unlimited access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research database, members get access to Fastcase’s libraries of statutes, regulations and much more. The service also includes annotated statutes from other states, Fastcase’s annotated U.S. Code, transactional access to newspaper articles, federal court filings, and legal forms, and transactional access through HeinOnline to the largest collection of law reviews in the world.
Fastcase has gained strong momentum in the legal research market and continues to challenge the incumbents in legal publishing and legal technology. In the American Bar Association’s annual tech survey, users have ranked Fastcase the most popular smartphone app for lawyers every year, including in the 2015 survey. From 2010 through 2014, Fastcase was named to the prestigious EContent 100 list of companies that matter most in the digital economy alongside Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook from 2010-14. The American Association of Law Libraries named Fastcase’s integration with HeinOnline its 2014 New Product of the Year, and its app for iPhone the 2010 New Product of the Year.
About Alameda County Bar Association
Founded in 1877, the mission of the Alameda County Bar Association (ACBA) is to promote excellence in the legal profession and to facilitate equal access to justice. The ACBA is a nonprofit, voluntary bar association and has a membership of approximately 1,500 attorneys, judges, law students and other professionals working within the legal profession in the greater Bay Area. The ACBA administers numerous programs and activities to benefit attorneys and the community.
About Fastcase
Fastcase is a leading legal publisher focused on smarter legal software that democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy users sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling the re-sorting of results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase is one of the fastest-growing legal tech companies, with more than 800,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, follow Fastcase on Twitter at @Fastcase or visit www.fastcase.com.
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