#WestwoodandCarlson
@Michael Carlson
I’m recently back from attending the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in our nation’s capitol where over 1700 law librarians geeked out at every turn. I went on a special, early-morning tour of the DOJ library and building and a large reception was held at, could we have a moment of reverent silence please?, the Library of Congress. We were greeted by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Law Librarian of Congress Jane Sanchez, and if you need a visual of “preaching to the choir” just picture that. I also attended a fascinating program describing how librarians at the Folger Shakespeare Library helped identify and return to Durham, England a First Folio that had been stolen years ago.
History was cool, but I spent most of my time looking at new developments, programs and products. As you would expect, the exhibit hall was anchored by the huge legal information vendors Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg Law and Lexis (not unlike Macy’s and Nordstrom’s at the Mall of America). But there were a variety of other vendors there and I’d like to tell you a bit about a Fastcase presentation I attended. Why Fastcase? Well, they’ve spent years cultivating a “cool kids” image at AALL and that’s always appealing, but I also know that access to Fastcase is an MSBA benefit so am interested in what they’re working on in terms of improvement.
This year, they’re rolling out something called “Law Street Media.” As it was described in the presentation, current practice to generate business for many firms is to read newsletters to find out who is being sued and why. But by the time you read a newsletter, it’s getting late in the game to reach out to parties or potential parties. PACER docket alerts have been around for awhile, and some firms use them to find out about cases early in the process, but PACER only contains federal dockets and costs associated with PACER can add up. Fastcase acquired a company called Docket Alarm in 2018, which accesses federal and state dockets as well as providing analytics on judges, parties, law firms and attorneys. Fastcase will use Docket Alarm’s strong data analytics and docket information as a backbone for Law Street Media.
Law Street Media claims an ability to drill down into state court dockets, so attorneys get very current information on what is happening locally – the types of cases that will potentially be more interesting to smaller firms. Fastcase plans to offer a short summary of a given suit; available documents (complaint and other filings); judge, attorney, and state analytics on the case; and links into Fastcase for the leading law related to the case. All this will be free, although a subscription will be required for access to case alerts on similar suits across the jurisdiction and for more indepth analysis.
What do you think about this, @Michael Carlson? Do you think something like this will help small firms get a leg up on new cases, or will this just give the large firms another way to move “down market” to get work? Come at me with your questions and I’ll see what I can find out.