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| Publication year | 2011 |
| Pages | 0060 |
Fastcase Authority Check Report
by Sheila Baldwin
Since the beginning of 2011, all Georgia attorneys have enjoyed free access to Fastcase for their legal research. Many have taken advantage of the live training that has been offered at the three State Bar locations. Upcoming sessions, both live and web based, are posted on the Bar website, www.gabar.org, under "Bar News & Events."
One of the first things attorneys want to know about Fastcase is "will it shepardize?" Since Frank Shepard invented the legal citator, attorneys have depended on legal research aids, both in print and now online, to compile authoritative cases that have cited their cases, and then to determine if they are good law. The term "shepardize" has become a generic term to describe the process of learning if a case or statue is still good law. It implies that the system one uses to research the law is supported by a sophisticated method of analysis by a large team of attorneys and experts who analyze cases and attach symbols to define the current status of the case or statute. Lexis and West are the two companies who offer "sheperdizing" with in-depth analysis.
Authority Check is the name of Fastcase's automatic integrated citation analysis tool. It is designed to help users locate and analyze subsequent cases. Fastcase makes it known that this tool is "not a citator; it does not include editorial information telling you whether a case is still good law and it does not check for subsequent cases overruling your case." For members' convenience they offer a link to Lexis and West for pay-per-cite options.
What Authority Check does offer is the ability to find seminal cases by sorting search results according to the number of subsequent citations. This tool also generates a list of later citing cases to find related authority on your topic as well as prioritizing your research by identifying the most frequently cited cases on your list of results.
Using search terms, (security OR pledge) and assignment /10 exemption (see fig. 1), in the Georgia federal and state jurisdictions, 30 cases appear in the results page. On the right side of the screen, the number of times a case is cited is listed under these labels, "these results" and "entire database" (see fig. 2). By clicking on either of these terms, the most frequently cited cases are brought to the top of the screen. Elzea v. National Bank of...
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