If that weren’t already enough, we have a new addition to our suite of smarter legal research tools: Fastcase Forecite®.

What Does Forecite Do?

Forecite, a new addition to our suite of smarter legal research tools, is the perfect backstop to your case law research. When you perform a keyword search on Fastcase, Forecite goes the extra mile and identifies seminal cases that can easily be missed by ordinary keyword searches.

Consider this example.

Let’s say you were researching the Miranda Doctrine under the Fifth Amendment. Can you imagine concluding your research without reading the Supreme Court’s seminal decision, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)? We can’t either. The trouble is, if you search for “Miranda doctrine” using most legal research engines, the Miranda decision will not be in your search results, because those words do not appear anywhere in the decision.

This is where Forecite comes in. Run the same search on Fastcase, and Forecite has you covered.

- At the top of your search results screen, you will see a salmon-colored banner indicating that Forecite has identified additional decisions that may be relevant to your research topic, but do not contain your search terms.

- Click the orange View Results button and the first suggested case is Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).  It is that simple.

How Does Forecite Work?

Like Authority Check, Forecite carefully and comprehensively analyzes the citation structure of your search results. Forecite looks for cases that are frequently cited by other cases in your search results that do not contain all of your search terms.

Seeing Is Believing.

But don’t take our word for it, see for yourself.  Sign up for a free, no-strings 24-hr trial of Fastcase to test drive Forecite and the rest of our smarter research tools by visiting www.fastcase.com/subscription.  (Current subscribers to our web-based legal research service already have access to Forecite.  This feature is not currently available on our mobile apps.)

Questions? 1-866-773-2782 or support@fastcase.com.

A month ago, we were so excited about the release of a new iPhone App, BarMax CA, we just had to write about it. While it grabbed headlines for being the most expensive app in the iTunes store ($999), we were more excited about its potential for disrupting the bar prep market.

It appears the little-app-that-could has done just that.  As TechCrunch just reported, the bar prep giant BarBri, a live bar prep course that costs few thousand dollars more than BarMax, has responded with two major changes that poor, stressed-out, potential attorneys should really like.

For one, BarBri is now giving users “unlimited online access” to users.  The second, more substantial change is that BarBri will now allow folks who didn’t pass the bar to re-take the course, instead of paying a couple thousand dollars more (talk about kicking you when you’re down).  Of course, these are two things that BarMax could already boast—you bought the app, you keep the app.

Coolest of all, BarMax has responded with genuine excitement about these changes.  While this response is probably a good PR move either way, you get the feeling that BarMax isn’t only trying to provide a valuable product and make a profit, they truly want to improve the bar prep market by disrupting it.

As we noted last time, we’re all for tech-savvy alternatives that make your research easier and more affordable, plus add competition to a market that needs it.  Don’t have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? No problem—you can rent an iPod Touch from BarMax.  Now that’s lowering the bar.

From the few reviews on the iTunes Store, it sounds like BarMax CA is an intuitive, functional app.  Of course, we’ll know more after folks take the CA Bar exam next week.  And while the bar prep app is only for the CA Bar right now, they’ve also just released a $500 MBE app. Sounds like they’re expanding.  With BarBri already a bit spooked, it will be interesting to see just how competitive this market can become.

What’s more, it’s completely free to download and use as much as you’d like.  It harnesses the full power, functionality, and extensive database of the Web-based Fastcase platform that our users depend on (click here for more information about our Web-based platform).   Full functionality means searching cases and statutes with Fastcase’s smarter tools and intuitive interface.

When searching cases, you can specify the jurisdiction, narrow the date range, limit the number of results, and choose to sort your results by relevance, date, short name, or by the number of times a case has been cited by others.  In addition to sorting results, you’ll also be able to choose how your results appear with three options—display ‘Title’ only for quick browsing, ‘Title + First Paragraph’ to see the beginning of the case, or ‘Title + Most Relevant Paragraph’ to see the portion of the case that refers to your keywords most often.

Other features include the ability to browse statutes, pull up a list of later citing cases with Authority Check, save a case for later, view recent searches, and change a document’s font size to small, medium, or large.

We’re proud to offer Fastcase for the iPhone with no strings attached.  If you are already a Fastcase subscriber or have signed up for a free trial with us in the past, then you are already registered to use Fastcase for iPhone.  Just click here to download the App from the App Store.  If you have forgotten your password, click here to retrieve it and have it sent to the e-mail address you used to register with Fastcase.

We are also proud to report that so far, the reviews have been very positive.  But we are eager to hear your impressions.  So check out Fastcase for the iPhone today and send us your comments via Twitter or e-mail.