Bar Bytes

• Publication year: 2022
• Pages: 16

BAR BYTES Vol. 33 Issue 6 Pg. 16 South Carolina Bar Journal May, 2022

Fastcase Authority Check: Ready for Prime Time

By Eve Ross

Fastcase is a subscription legal research product provided at no cost as a benefit to SC Bar members. Like Lexis and Westlaw, it includes a proprietary citator, "Authority Check." Is Authority Check comparable to competitors KeyCite and Shepard's?

My sense from casual usage is yes, although this was not an exhaustive scientific study. I invite readers to test Authority Check for themselves and see whether the results are replicated.

On Your Mark, Get Set...

To test citators side-by-side, first I identified a South Carolina case that is bad law: State v. Adams, 277 S.C. 115, 283 S.E.2d 582 (1981), overruled by State v. Torrence, 305 S.C. 45, 406 S.E.2d 315 (1991). I logged into Fastcase, WestlawNext, and Lexis+, each in a different tab of the Chrome internet browser. I pasted the 277 S.C. 115 citation into the search bar on the home page of each site.

When I clicked on State v. Adams in the dropdown just below the search bar on Fastcase, I also hit "start" on a stopwatch. When Adams loaded in my browser, I then clicked into Authority Check to retrieve the list of cases citing Adams. I navigated from that list to the overruling case, Torrence. Once Torrence loaded in my browser, I stopped the stopwatch. I then repeated that process with Westlaw's KeyCite, and again with Lexis' Shepard's.

Timed results were: Fastcase's Authority Check - 22 seconds, Westlaw's KeyCite - 25 seconds, and Lexis' Shepard's - 59 seconds. Of these three, I most frequently use Westlaw, which likely gave it a speed advantage due to habit. Despite my infrequent Fastcase use, Fastcase was—true to its name—fastest.

Comparing Results Lists in the Table

The table includes only South Carolina state cases that negatively treat State v. Adams. These were limitations I imposed to keep the table brief, rather than include all cases citing Adams (Authority Check - 63 cases, KeyCite - 67 cases, and Shepard's - 70 cases). To aid in comparison, the cases that are unique to one citator's abbreviated results list are bolded in the table.

The first row of the table shows that Westlaw's KeyCite was the only citator that expressly included Torrence (the case that overruled Adams) in the list of cases negatively treating Adams. By contrast, Fastcase's Authority Check listed Stone v. State first among cases negatively treating Adams. Authority Check highlighted the excerpt from Stone that states Adams was over; ruled by Torrence. Stone appeared first...