This week Fastcase announced a new partnership with Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory which will enhance Fastcase subscribers access to treatises, handbooks and other secondary sources. Wolters Kluwer sold their Loislaw research platform to Fastcase in 2015. It appears that both companies recognize the complimentary nature of each others resources. Fastcase has been bulking up their secondary source content throughout the past year through both alliances and launching their own imprint Full Court Press and hiring seasoned legal publishing executive, Steve Errick in 2017 as Chief Operating Officer.
With the Wolters Kluwer alliance, Fastcase gains more ground in their quest to close the “content gap” and become a serious competitor to Lexis and Westlaw who have dominated the legal research market for the past 30 years.
I would not expect this to be the last alliance between Fastcase and Wolters Kluwer. Fastcase still lacks regulatory materials which is one of Wolters Kluwer’s core strengths. And Fastcase has the caselaw archive that Wolters Kluwer lacks.
The Wolters Kluwer/Aspen Books
Fastcase has added more than 125 titles from Wolters Kluwer covering a wide range of legal issues such as bankruptcy, construction law, consumer finance, elder law, employment, family law, health law, litigation, insurance, pension and benefits, real estate, and many more. At this time the Wolters Kluwer collection will be available to Fastcase subscribers in first of 1 to 9 lawyers who choose to add the WK content. The WK materials will be fully searchable within Fastcase.
Ed Walters CEO of Fastcase also outlined how this alliance fits into Fastcase’s larger secondary source strategy . “Lawyers trust Fastcase as a powerful way to find the law,Now, with the launch of our publishing arm Full Court Press, our integration of the expert commentary of more than 15,000 legal bloggers in the LexBlog network, and our partnership with Wolters Kluwer, Fastcase will be an essential source for legal news and expert guidance as well. These libraries from Wolters Kluwer are some of the most comprehensive and authoritative in the world, and we couldn’t be more proud to partner with them to share that guidance with our very sophisticated subscribers.”
Fastcase despite their aggressive growth has remained a reasonably priced legal research platform. As they continue to enhance the platform by expanding content and leveraging both alliances and new technology, the threat of disruption and competitor product displacement grows.