Tech Report: Fastcase Legal Research – How to Use It (getting started) - California Lawyers Association (2024)

Fastcase legal research – How to Use It (getting started)
Tech Tips, Your AI In-House Editor
By Robert Klein, Los Angeles
A law practice devoted to helping personal injury victims.
robert@rkleinlaw.com

Last month, I talked about Fastcase, which is a free member benefit to any member of the CLA. This month, I will walk you through the initial steps for using Fastcase. By the way, your $95 CLA membership provides you with this wonderful benefit which is worth $695 per year.

How you access Fastcase, through the CLAportal, is critical to unlocking allthe paid features. There are actually 2 ways to gain access. The easier way: goto the CLA page (www.calawyers.org)and log in. Once logged in, on the upper right side of your screen, you willsee a link to “my account.” Click on that link and near the bottom of that drop-downmenu you will see “Fastcase.” Click on Fastcase and you will be takento the Fastcase website. The second way to gain access is starting onFastcase.com. On the top bar, there is a link to “Bar Associations.” If youclick that, you will see California Lawyers Association. If you click that, youstart at the CLA page and you follow the steps written above after “The easierway.”

Once you gain access to the Fastcase web page through the CLA link, in the second paragraph, you will see a sentence that states “To view CLA sections’ publications, click here. Or, start researching now directly on Fastcase.” By clicking on start researching now, you have unlocked a paid version of Fastcase. There is a “help” button on the top bar of Fastcase containing many tips and tricks.

My research topic for this article is anissue I have for a client who was involved inan accident. He was visiting Los Angeles from London and rented a car. He didnot purchase the liability rental insurance. While stopped at a light, anothercar crashed into the rear of the rental car. He was taken to the emergency roomand had follow up medical treatment. His vacation was ruined. He made a claimfor compensation for his injuries and damages.

The insurance carrier for the at-fault driverclaims my client was driving a car without insurance and pursuant to Prop 213 (§3333.4 ) they claim he is uninsured and notentitled to recover general damages. They base this argument on the “GravesAmendment”.

Once logged in Fastcase (abbreviatedhereafter to FC), I started by searching a key word: Graves Amendment. In thesearch bar located on the top of the page, Ientered “Graves w/3 Amendment.” In this quick search window, you can enter acase site or a key word. Typing a key word is supported by a predictivealgorithm (like a Google search – it makes suggestions.)

There are 3 ways to search in FC: naturallanguage, keyword, or by citation. A natural search is a search like you do on Google.A keyword search is a Boolean search and is more precise than a naturallanguage search. While a natural language search may be recommended as astarting point, you cannot narrow your results and it may not find all theresults or even the best results.

After entering “Graves Amendment,” on theleft side of the screen I was able to limit thesearch. FC states jurisdiction in a blue banner and below that it states authoritylevel in a green banner, I limited Jurisdiction to California and authoritylevel to California and entered search. The search bar changed to read “((gravesw/3 amendment) AND (ca)) AND (california)”. I quickly realized the search istoo narrow, so I entered the actual code section, Civil Code § 3333.4. Iobtained 94 results and decided to filter bydate rather than relevance. I also realized that Fastcase is not as intuitiveas I initially anticipated. It is time to go back and brush up on doing a Booleansearch. I then narrowed the search by jurisdiction and authority level. Thatreduced the number of cases to 45. I then used the “document type” andeliminated 2 treatises or books.

As I looked at the cases, I realized some are from unpublished decisions. I also made useof the other tools. For example, there is a page up or down button which is aquick way to get the next document. There is an outline button showing if thecase has been cited in any later decisions. A print button allows me to downloada pdf of the case and the “star_outline”button allows me to add a case to one of my Favorites. Finally, the sharebutton allows me to email the document.

Some other tools are also very useful. Forexample one allows me to jump to the search words; another jumps to the mostrelevant paragraph and another jumps to the highlighted portions of the text.These tools pinpoint the key portions of cases which can speed up an initialsearch. Of course we know that reading anentire case is important for an appropriate legal research.

In concluding this article, I one to pointout that on any screen, there is access to help. On the top right banner, thereis a drop-down menu under the word help. There is user guide, there aretutorials and there are hot keys. There is a Fastcase quick reference guidethat is a one-page document showing how to locate a case by keyword, partyname, citation and showing how to print, sort or filter search results andseveral other options. I also located and downloaded their 38-page 2018 Editionuser guide. After reviewing the user guide, I learned some other interestingand very helpful tips. I will share more in next month’s article so all of uscan become master users of Fastcase. Till then…

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