After publishing my head-to-head review comparing Casemaker and Fastcase, I noted in a follow-up post earlier this month the Oregon State Bar Association’s decision to switch from Casemaker to Fastcase and Casemaker’s response to that decision.
Now, Laura Orr at Oregon Legal Research offers another perspective on the Casemaker vs. Fastcase debate that she describes as “closed vs. open source.” Casemaker only allows lawyers to subscribe, whereas Fastcase is open to anyone to subscribe. That means that law librarians, paralegals and other legal support professionals cannot use Casemaker.
Casemaker’s closed-subscription policy, Orr writes, “is a real liability in the legal world, where non-attorneys in large and small law firms are the very people who not only do a lot of database searching but are also the very people who can offer hands-on, real-time database training to attorneys, on the spot.”