Hein Online & Fastcase Collaborate to Expand Both Services

This is one of those things that catches everyone by surprise right before the annual AALL conference. W.S. Hein and Fastcase announced this morning that they are forming a partnership to integrate content on each platform and create a more extensive legal research database. This is the sort of thing that everyone expected from Aspen/CCH/Loislaw a few years ago, but never really happened. Having worked over the years with both Fastcase and Hein Online, I have to personally say that this partnership has great potential. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out and what the final products look like.

Here’s the press release from this morning.

Independent legal publishers William S. Hein & Co. and Fastcase today announced a new partnership in which the companies will share complementary strengths for the benefit of their members.
Under the agreement, Hein will provide federal and state case law to HeinOnline subscribers via inline hyperlinks powered by Fastcase. In addition, Fastcase will completely integrate HeinOnline’s extensive law review and historical state statute collection in search results, with full access available to Fastcase subscribers who additionally subscribe to Hein’s law review database.
The partnership combines Hein’s expertise in publishing law journals and historical statutory materials and Fastcase’s experience in publishing American primary law. It offers users of both services a complete, integrated legal research experience.
“Fastcase and HeinOnline are two of the largest independent legal publishers in America,” said Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase. “Integrating these two libraries is a home run for our members. Both services create unique values based on citation analysis and the information architecture of the law. Beyond the fantastic new libraries our users can access, we’re also making our tools smarter as they learn from these new citation relationships.”
As a result of the agreement, Hein’s federal case coverage includes the judicial opinions of the Supreme Court (1754-present), Federal Circuits (1924-present), Board of Tax Appeals (vols. 1-47), Tax Court Memorandum Decisions (vols. 1-59), U.S. Customs Court (vols. 1-70), Board of Immigration Appeals (1996-present), Federal District Courts (1924-present), and Federal Bankruptcy Courts (1 B.R. 1-present). The state case law covers all fifty states with nearly half of the states dating back to the 1800’s. Coverage for the remaining states dates back to approximately 1950.
HeinOnline subscribers also will be able to take advantage of Authority Check, an integrated citation analysis tool developed by Fastcase. When cases are called by HeinOnline, Fastcase’s Authority Check tool will include one of Fastcase’s newest features, “Bad Law Bot”, which uses algorithms to identify negative citation history. These services will be integrated into all HeinOnline subscriptions, which will add tremendous value at no additional cost.
Concurrently, Hein will provide HeinOnline materials to Fastcase, allowing Fastcase users to search across content available in the Law Journal Library, Session Laws Library, State Attorney General Reports and Opinions, and State Statutes: A Historical Archive. The new libraries will be fully integrated into Fastcase’s search system, and Fastcase users will see Hein results and abstracts for free, with subscription options for the full articles. The Hein collection will include more than 1,800 law reviews back to their first volumes, and represents the first secondary material to be integrated into the Fastcase legal research service.
The integrated libraries will be available on both services at the end of the summer.
About HeinOnline: Produced by William S. Hein & Co., Inc., HeinOnline includes nearly 100 million pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. HeinOnline bridges the gap in legal history by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 1,800 law and law-related periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of law journals, HeinOnline also contains the Congressional Record Bound volumes in their entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, famous world trials dating back to the early 1700′s, legal classics from the 16th to the 20th centuries, the United Nations and League of Nations Treaty Series, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register from inception in 1936, the CFR from inception in 1938, and much more. For more information about HeinOnline, please visit http://home.heinonline.org.
About Fastcase: As the smarter alternative for legal research, Fastcase 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 has more than 500,000 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 http://www.fastcase.com.
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