Robert Ambrogi Blog
Yesterday, Hein and Fastcase announced a publishing partnership through which the companies will share primary and secondary legal materials. Today, Fastcase revealed details about how the arrangement will be priced.
Under the agreement between the companies, Hein will provide its HeinOnline subscribers with access to federal and state case law via inline hyperlinks powered by Fastcase. HeinOnline subscribers also will be able to use Fastcase’s citation analysis tool Authority Check. When a HeinOnline user views a case, the Authority Check tool will include Fastcase’s new Bad Law Bot feature, which uses algorithms to identify negative citation history. (See my post about Bad Law Bot.)
For its subscribers, Fastcase will integrate HeinOnline’s extensive law review and historical state statute collection in search results; access to the full articles will require an additional subscription. This will include the following Hein libraries: Law Journal Library, Session Laws Library, State Attorney General Reports and Opinions, and State Statutes: A Historical Archive.
Although these Hein materials will show up in Fastcase search results, access to the full articles and documents will require an additional subscription. Subscriptions will be offered at three levels:
- 24 hours: $29.95.
- One month: $59.
- One year: $595.
Volume discounts will also be available.
“We’re thrilled to offer access to the law journals and historical statutory materials on a subscription basis,” Fastcase CEO Ed Walters told me. He said that Hein’s Law Journal database is about double the size of what is available through Westlaw or LexisNexis.
“But equally important is the impact on Fastcase’s citation analysis tools,” Walters said. “Adding law review citations to judicial opinions helps us rank search results more intelligently, for example, giving a relevance boost to cases that aren’t cited by courts, but are cited by law review articles. In the Authority Check report for a case, we can show not only later citing cases and negative treatment from Bad Law Bot — but we can also show citations by law review articles. And of course, we can render law review article results in the Interactive Timeline, our first-of-its-kind data visualization tool for legal research.”
The full integration will become available to Hein and Fastcase subscribers in the fall.
This is significant news for subscribers to both Hein and Fastcase. Hein users get enhanced access to primary legal materials and citation analysis, while Fastcase users get access to a significant body of secondary legal materials. In a broader sense, yesterday’s announcement signifies another big step for smaller legal publishers in establishing themselves as viable alternatives to Wexisberg.