Some Fastcase Hints and Tips

WEBINARS

Fastcase provides free live training webinars so you can learn at your convenience. You can find a schedule of webinars and handouts on Introduction to Legal Research on Fastcase, Advanced Tips for Enhanced Legal Research, and Introduction to Boolean (Keyword) Searches here. 

Fastcase offers a variety of searchable databases to help you find cases and statutes quickly and easily. One of Fastcase's features is the ability to search statutes across multiple jurisdictions, allowing you to survey a topic across their statutory collection.

Example: If you are looking for statutes on the equitable distribution of property, you could follow these steps:

1. Select Search Statutes from the Search memo on the homepage.

2. In the search bar, enter the following: "equitable distribution" and property.

3. Click the Select All button under the list of current statutes.

4. Select Search.

5. You will then see a list of all the statutes that reference the phrase "equitable distribution" and property. The results will be listed by relevance (the sections containing the most discussion of your keywords will be listed first).

6. You may now click on the title of a section to view it individually. You may then print your desired results, add them to your print queue, save them to your library, or email them to yourself or to your colleagues.

This article is provided as a service to our members:

Since the State Bar of Arizona is offering Fastcase access as a valuable part of your member benefits package, Fastcase has supplied these hints and tips to make your use of Fastcase as effective and efficient as possible. In the coming months, we will publish more series notes, and you'll have a little primer on the use of Fastcase. We'll start with three easy ones:

ACCESS ["How or where do I find Fastcase?"]:

You must log in through the State Bar of Arizona page at http://www.azbar.org/membertools/fastcase, using your State Bar username and password. If you have forgotten either your username or password, please contact the State Bar at 602.340.7239.

CONTENT ["So what does my access offer me?"]: The access arrangement the State Bar has negotiated on your behalf includes:

Federal Law
• U.S. Supreme Court Cases
• Federal Circuit Courts

Federal District Courts
• Bankruptcy Courts
• U.S. Code of Federal Regulations

Special Courts
• Board of Tax Appeals
• Tax Court Memorandum Decisions
• U.S. Customs Court

State Law - Access to all 50 States
• Supreme and Appellate Court Cases (Since 1950)
• Statutes
• Regulations
• Constitutions
• Court Rules

You get U.S. Supreme Court, all the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, all U.S. District and Bankruptcy Courts and the two highest court levels from each state—and your plan includes access to all the states. If you need an Arizona case or federal case, it is all part of your plan, at no additional cost. Your plan also includes several specialty courts or tribunals covered by Fastcase: Court of International Trade, U.S. Court of Claims, U.S. Tax Court, Board of Immigration Appeals, etc. For more information, visit www.fastcase.com/barmembers.

UPDATING ["How soon do new cases show up in Fastcase?"]: Fastcase offers daily updating for every court covered in our database: Wednesday's work is in the database on Thursday, Thursday's work on Friday, Friday's work on Monday, etc. All decisions go in as slip opinions. When/if the case subsequently appears in a case reporter, the slip opinion is removed from the database and replaced by the reported version, complete with reporter citation. If the case is not subsequently covered in a reporter, the slip opinion stays in the database as an unreported (or unpublished) case, still searchable by key word.