AMSL students, faculty and staff may register for a free Bloomberg Law password.
Bloomberg may be used for employment purposes as well as academic use.
It has cases, statutes and regulations for federal and the fifty states, as well as forms, practice books, news, dockets, legislative watch, regulation watch, company information and more. Citator has signals to easily tell subsequent treatment. Features an all-in-one search box (Go Search), ability to post notes on cases and other documents, save documents in folders, and alert searches.
Access Fastcase, a federal and 50-state case law database. It has natural language, as well as boolean search capabilities.
Authority Check citator provides list of cases citing your case and blurb of text from the citing cases, but no signals. However, Fastcase retrieves SOME negative treatment (but not all). When a court cites a case that has been overturned or reversed (even on other grounds), the Bluebook requires that the court indicate the negative history right there in the citation. Bad Law Bot reads through the citations in Fastcase, identifying this kind of negative "signal information" in citations. It then reports what other courts have said about this case when citing it, flagging negative history reported by the courts. Note that this is a limited form of negative history. It reports only what cases say in citations. So the Bad Law Bot will not flag a case that has been overturned but never cited, for example. And Bad Law Bot uses algorithms, not human editors. If you see no negative history, that does not necessarily mean that your case is good law.
Cases where Fastcase finds negative treatment are so indicated with red flags.
Unique features of Fastcase include Forecite, which identifies cases likely to be on point that do not include all your search terms, and Interactive Timeline, which shows the chronology of cases in your search results and which cases were cited most frequently.
State and federal case and statutory law offered in a variety of low cost plans. Free for law students and faculty.
Casemaker includes cases and statutes for 50 states and federal. (They do not have headnotes or annotations). Depending on the state, there may be more. It has an all-in-one search box and filters on the left, and folders to store research.
Casemaker has a basic citator, CaseCheck, which provides a list of cases that cite the case, while CaseCheck Plus provides signals and negative treatment at a glance. CaseCheck Plus is free to students, but costs a bit extra for attorneys.
Unannotated Statutes |
Cases w/o Headnotes |
Unannotated Regulations | “Shepard’s –Like Feature” | Other | |
Bloomberg Law | Yes |
Yes - OH - Supreme 1852-; App. 1912-; Misc. 1946-2001; Selected unreporteds 2005- Federal - 1789 for Supreme and District, 1891 for Circuit. |
Yes | Yes | Dockets, Forms, Practice Books, News, Company Info, Legislation/reg tracking |
Casemaker | Yes |
Yes– OH Supreme Ct. (1894-); Ohio App.(1934-); Ohio Misc.(1999) Ohio unreported 1981- |
Yes | Yes | Some Jurisdictions - Jury Instruc., Jury Verdicts, More |
Fastcase | Internet links for 8 states | Fed. App. 1924-, Ohio 1950 -, Ohio unreporteds 2000-.Coverage | Mostly Internet Links | Yes | --- |
Versuslaw - See help, Content/ Features |
Fed if pay more, no state | Ohio 1950 -. Ohio unreporteds 1995 -. Older Fed District More $ | Fed if pay more, no State | Yes | ---- |
Loislaw | Yes | Yes – Ohio unreporteds 1997- | Yes | Yes |
Treatises, Forms, Public Records (Depends on Plan) |
Boolean | Natural Language | Fields | Search databases together | Saves Searches, Alert Searches |
Folders |
|
Bloomberg Law | Yes - s/, p/ | No | Advanced Searches on the right side | All-in-One Search Box |
Saves Searches and Alert Searches |
Yes |
Casemaker | Yes - w/n, w/sent, w/para | No - coming soon | Yes | All-in-One Search Box | Saves Searches | Yes |
Fastcase | Yes - w/n | Yes | Date, cite look-up only | Yes | Saves last 10 searches | No |
Versuslaw | Yes - w/n | Yes default connector is ADJ | 4 fields, see help | For additional fee | No | No |
Loislaw | Yes - near2 | No | Yes | Yes |
Saves Searches and Alert Searches |
All-in-One search box |
These databases are not necessarily inexpensive, but usage is typically not billed back to clients. They focus on certain subjects. BNA includes many expertly prepared current awareness services, as well as treatises and primary sources.