Today Fastcase is announcing the addition of speciailized risk data from Trans Union’s alternative, non-credit, public records product.  TransUnion  is well known to librarians as a leading global aggregator of public records and credit data.  This new public records content will assist researchers in performing due diligence, locating parties and  witnesses and a variety of litigation support activities .

Fastcase’s Chief operating officer Steve Errick indicated that the alliance with Trans Union arose from “repeated requests from our subscribers for data on people assets and businesses.”

Over the past year Fastcase has accelerated it’s trajectory towards becoming a full-service legal information platform. Recent alliances include Courtroom Insight for expert witness data, the acquisition of the Docket Alarm analytics platform and the launching of a publication arm under the Full-Court Press imprint.

Leveling the playing field

In the first  quarter of 2019 Fastcase will deliver  TransUnion data  on their new Mercury platform. While large law firm’s with sophisticated research and knowledge teams have long had access to public records data,  Fastcase is now making sophisticated analytics and data from TransUnion available to the small and medium size firm market.

“For years our state and local bar partners and consumer bankruptcy customers have asked us for risk solutions that include public records data. Now we’re seeing interest among our AmLaw 250 subscribers as well,” said Fastcase President Phil Rosenthal. “Naturally, when the chance to partner with TransUnion was presented, we jumped at the opportunity.”

Errick described the Fastcase strategy in this way “ we spent 2018 building differentiator products—for 2019 we are doubling down on foundational products expected by our customers”

The legal research market was for decades dominated by Lexis and Westlaw. Fastcase’s steady growth as lower cost alternative to Lexis, Westlaw and BloombergLaw is one of the most fascinating and potentially disruptive developments  which law firms should factor into long term strategy for research resources.