Member Benefits Legal Research Just Got Easier

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Pages: 0060
• Citation: Vol. 29 No. 1 Pg. 0060
• Publication year: 2023

Member Benefits Legal Research Just Got Easier Vol. 29 No. 1 Pg. 60 Georgia Bar Journal August, 2023

Fastcase announced the launch of its new negative citator: Cert.

BY LEANNE BATTLE

Fastcase, that recently announced its merger with vLex to establish the world's largest global law library, is delighted to unveil its latest innovation in legal research: Cert, a cutting-edge negative citator tool. Cert empowers legal researchers by swiftly and effortlessly identifying cases that have been treated unfavorably in subsequent decisions, thus providing a comprehensive perspective on a case's precedential value.

Fastcase's Cert, available to State Bar of Georgia members at no additional cost, has launched for the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the Supreme Court of Georgia and the Court of Appeals of Georgia with complete nationwide coverage forthcoming. This new feature is the first to launch since joining forces with vLex, and the company's now collective knowledge of intelligent legal technology, combined with the work of a human review team whose members have more than 100 years of collective editorial expertise, will bring more advances to Fastcase users in the future.

How It Works

Cert seamlessly integrates into Fastcase's user interface, streamlining the research process. When searching for cases, legal researchers will find intuitive visual cues that provide instant insights into negative treatment. An orange inverted triangle denotes treatments such as criticism, disagreement or the refusal to extend a ruling. Meanwhile, a red circle indicates that a case has been overruled, abrogated, superseded or otherwise invalidated.

Other features include a badge affixed to the top of negatively treated cases for easy identification, a label specifying the treatment applied, a treatment summary box setting forth the history of the treatment, the number of citing cases, the last cited date and a link to a full Cert report (see fig. 1).

The Cert report is a downloadable document encompassing the foregoing information and listing cases treating the cited case as "bad law," inclusive of the...