Fastcase is pleased to announce the release of version 7.5.3 of our flagship legal research platform. Houston, we have cleared the tower! Since starting Fastcase 7, we’ve designed our legal research platform with users in mind. We’ve been listening to our Fastcase 7 users, we’ve developed many of their good ideas, and we’re happy to release the changes we believe will make your experience even better! What have we done?

 

New Jurisdiction Selection Process

 

We heard from many users about selecting a jurisdiction, and we’ve honed the process to be even more straightforward. Our Jurisdiction & Sources selector and Refine Search facets make selecting and filtering your results a breeze.

 

Jurisdiction and Sources

 

To select your jurisdiction simply click on the search bar’s “Jurisdiction & Sources” button.  

 

 

You’ll see a list of jurisdictions, as well as a map, that both allows you to quickly select a state court, federal court, or secondary source.  You can also type in the name of your state, court, source (e.g., books), or topic (e.g., bankruptcy)  in the filter bar above the list. That will give you just the results you need — nothing more.

 

 

When you select a state or court, the list of libraries appears. To add a library to your search scope, just click it.

 

 

Facets and Filtering

 

When you run your search, the first thing you’ll notice — on the left-hand side — are the new facets.  They show (1) all the sources containing results and (2) each source’s number of results.  To filter/narrow your results, simply click on a facet (e.g., jurisdiction, source).

 

 

The top of the list contains your currently selected sources. The example above is filtered to DC state cases.  You can also type terms (e.g., bankruptcy, California) to filter the facets list to show exactly what you need.

 

 

We’ve also made a lot of smaller changes to the platform that should make things much easier to navigate and use. To find out more about all the changes, check out our changelog. As always, we love hearing user comments, many of those make their way directly into our development pipeline.  If you have any questions or comments, please email support@fastcase.com.