New Features Added to Casemaker

If you’ve been following this blog lately, you’ll know that I recently attended the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries. While I was there, I spoke briefly with David Harriman, the CEO of Casemaker, the legal research service offered as a member benefit by some 25 state and local bar associations. He gave me a brief update on new Casemaker features, then sent me an email providing more details.

Two major enhancements involve Casemaker’s library. For case law, Casemaker has expanded its coverage further back in time. For most states, it now has case law back to statehood or earlier or to the first state reporter volume.

Meanwhile, Casemaker has also added the administrative codes for 33 states, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register and a number of state registers. Harriman said he expects to have added the administrative codes for all 50 states by the end of this year.

Beyond expanding its library, Casemaker has also added several new features in recent months. A major new feature is Casemaker Libra, by which users can get access to secondary research materials such as books, treatises and CLE materials.

To provide these materials, Casemaker is partnering with The Washington Bar, the Colorado Bar, and the American Bar Association to integrate their books and treatises. The Colorado and Washington Bar titles are now live on Casemaker, and the ABA books will begin appearing shortly.

Access to these materials is not included within the basic Casemaker subscription and must be purchased separately. Now, when you conduct a search, the results include any matches from these bar books. If you click the link, you are taken to a page where you can buy a one-year subscription to the book. Once you buy it, then it remains fully searchable and available to you on Casemaker for the duration of the subscription.

Alternatively, you can buy a single subscription to all the Colorado or Washington titles. A single subscription covering all Colorado titles is $2,495 for the year. For Washington titles, it is $1,500. A list of titles and prices can be found by following the links from the main Libra page.

Other new features Harriman described are:

• Statute Annotator. When viewing a statute on Casemaker, click the Annotator button and receive a list of linked cases that cite the statute with enough words around the statutory reference to help discern the context of the reference.
• Case Summaries. Summaries from the CasemakerDigest have been integrated into the cases on Casemaker for those who have CasemakerDigest access (an extra subscription of $20 a month). Detailed case summaries are now available on Casemaker when viewing a case result list or the case itself.
• Subsequent Case History. A subsequent case history feature has been introduced for Texas cases. When viewing a Texas Court of Appeals case, a click of the Subsequent Case History button brings the user links to any subsequent history with notification of whether the petition or writ for review was granted or denied. Casemaker will be extending this feature to other jurisdictions.
• Code Subsectioning. All statutory and administrative codes on Casemaker have now been set out with tagged subsections to promote a quicker grasp of the organization of a code section and to allow for linking at the subsection level. This is most useful when working with lengthy sections, Harriman said.
• Live Chat. Live chat is now available for customer support, in addition to email and a toll-free telephone number.

Finally, Casemaker has added two new bar associations that will be offering it to their members. The New York City Bar Association added it as of April 1, and Casemaker will become available to members of the Pennsylvania Bar Association beginning on Aug. 1.