By Barbara Engstrom
In the world of legal research, it seems that change is the only constant. For those of you who are regular Fastcase users through the WSBA’s platform you may have noticed that things look a bit different lately. Fastcase merged with vLex to create vLex/Fastcase. While you may not be familiar with vLex, (they didn’t have a big market share in the US prior to the merger) it is one of the fastest-growing legal tech companies internationally. vLex was founded in Spain and is a major player in foreign and international law research. With the merger, vLex/Fastcase claim to have formed “the world’s largest law firm subscriber base with more than one billion legal documents from more than 100 countries.”
For Fastcase, even more important than gaining access to a large international market share, the merger meant acquiring Vincent, a very sophisticated large language model AI. Fastcase CEO Ed Walters said, “AI is absolutely a motivator for the combination.” With the combined contents of vLex and Fastcase’s data sets, Vincent will be trained on the “biggest legal data corpus ever assembled.”1
Here are the highlights of my initial foray into vLex/Fastcase
Database Content
While the merger created “more than one billion legal documents from 100 countries” as WSBA members we only have access to U.S. state and federal primary law. Secondary source search results will display a portion of the content followed by the note: This document is not included in your subscription plan.
On Fastcase 7 we had access to full text law review articles from all the Washington state law schools (Gonzaga, Seattle University, and University of Washington). I presumed that vLex/Fastcase would have this same content but several searches from different angles produced no results for Washington state law review articles.
Pro Tip: In good news, Fastcase 7 is still available, so one can retrieve articles from our state law schools by closing out the vLex/Fastcase pop-up when first logging on and being taken straight to Fastcase 7. Click on the Jurisdictions link next to the search box. Choose Washington and then choose Law J. This search will include: Gonzaga Journal of International Law, Journal of Law, Technology & Arts, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Seattle University Law Review, University of Washington Law Review, and Washington International Law Journal.
The WSBA deskbooks are available on vLex/Fastcase but they too reside behind a paywall.
Pro Tip: Choose Advanced Search and then choose Books. Run your search. On the left side of the screen under the Publisher filter, type in Washington State Bar Association. Though you won’t be able to see the full text of the result, you will see a relevant snippet with the citation. Reach out to us at the law library and we can help you access the relevant section. If you are a KCLL subscriber, you will be able to pull up the relevant section yourself on KCLL’s LexisDigital platform from the comfort of your home or office.
Search Construction
The advanced search construction on vLex/Fastcase is very funky to say the least. I found constructing precise advanced searches to be quite difficult. Basic Boolean operators are available as is proximity search. Parentheses appear to be supported on vLex/Fastcase according to the Boolean Search Operators guide, but they didn’t seem to function in the normal way when combined with proximity searching. Oddly, in the advance search construction, each operation is done in a separate field making is difficult to construct a more complex query.
Pro Tip: An interesting search feature that I’ve not seen elsewhere is the bracket search. Putting a word in brackets will bring up “synonyms and expressions with semantic proximity, not just spelling. For example, if we wanted to include terms around transportation, we could search “urban planning” [train] AND Winnipeg. Using these terms, we get 8 results, and they include subway, tramway, and railway.”
For the most part, however, you will have better luck just running basic keyword searches rather than attempting to wrestle with vLex/Fastcase’s strange advance search operators and construction.
Looking at a Caselaw Search Result List
Since there is so much content on vLex/Fastcase, it is imperative that you narrow your jurisdiction and document type before running your search. From the main search page you will click on Advanced Search, choose Washington and then Cases. Run your search in the All the Words field. (Don’t worry you can tighten up your search later.)
When you pull up your search results list you will see a couple of interesting features. If a case has any negative treatment, you will see a red dot for abrogated/overruled and a yellow dot for distinguished. You will also see how often the case has been cited. Additionally, there is a paragraph icon next to each result. Clicking on this will take you directly to the three most relevant paragraphs based on the frequency of your keywords, making it easy to quickly scan a large result list to find keyword-rich cases.
Pro Tip: Use the Search in Results feature to tighten up a broad search with additional relevant terms. You can also use the Sort by dropdown menu to change the default relevance ranking to sorting by date or most cited.
Looking at a Case
When you click on a case from your result list, the top-line menu has citator options including Cited Authorities, Cited In, and Precedent Map (a graphic style citator).
Pro Tip: Move a little further along the top line menu and you will see a symbol next to a capital A. This is the translate icon. Use this to translate your case into one of 14 different languages. On the translation page you can easily switch between the original version, the translated version or a side-by-side, parallel version.
The Case Analysis at the beginning of each case is also interesting. For each case you will see Vincent AI generated features including: Legal Issue—a short summary of the primary legal issue in the case. Headnotes—Summaries of the main issues classified by subject matter. Key Paragraphs—the three most important paragraphs as determined by AI. Key Phrases—the most important legal terms of art as determined by AI.
I also found the Table of Contents feature on the left side of the screen interesting. The table of contents breaks the case down into hyperlinked component parts such as opinion, facts, and discussion—allowing one to quickly navigate the document.
Pro Tip: Instead of relying on the summaries created by Vincent you can create your own annotations. When you highlight a section of text you can Highlight it and/or create a Note. When you highlight and add notes, they will remain available when you pull the case up again in the future. You will see the highlights and notes on the side panel of the case. Highlighting text also allows one to copy and paste text with a basic citation included.
Vincent AI
As WSBA members we will not have access to Vincent AI other than where it is integrated as noted above. However, during the initial rollout I was able to run some searches using Vincent AI and I have to say I was pretty impressed. There are several ways to use Vincent AI. If you would like to answer a question using the dataset available on vLex/Fastcase you can just insert your question and hit enter.
If you would like to work with a set of your own documents, you can upload a Collection and limit the search to just those documents. For example, you could upload all pleadings and briefs from opposing counsel and ask Vincent to propose counterarguments.
Pro Tip: When using AI it is best to ask detailed prompts in the manner that you would if talking to another attorney. Vincent AI will suggest alternative prompts and will allow you to ask follow-up questions. The result is very much like having a conversation with a colleague.
Some other interesting tools on Vincent AI are Build an Argument—which finds sources to support or oppose a proposition, Compare Jurisdictions—which would let you compare the laws in two or more different jurisdictions (i.e. compare Oregon and Washington’s death with dignity acts), or 50 State Survey to compare laws in all 50 states.
What Else is Under the Hood of vLex/Fastcase?
Experience has taught me that when mergers such as this happen, lots of changes are in store. Features will come and go, and the learning curve will be continuous. I encourage you to boldly jump behind the wheel of vLex/Fastcase. Don’t be afraid to kick the tires!
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If you have questions about legal research, becoming a subscriber, or any other law related topics, feel free to contact the law library at services@kcll.org.
1 Sara Merken, Fastcase, vLex Merger Accelerates Investment into Legal AI, Reuter (April 4, 2023)
