I am enjoying reading the current issue of the Journal of Legal Education. In particular, the second article, From Snail Mail to E-mail: the Traditional Legal Memorandum in the Twenty-First Century, authored by Kristin K. Robbins-Tiscione, has gotten me thinking about the documents we use to teach students in the first-year writing courses.
Some of my former students will remember the domestic-violence asylum case, Matter of R-A-, which had been pending in a sort of limbo state since January 2001. The R-A- case presents the issue of whether an immigrant may obtain asylum in the United States on the basis of her well-founded fear that she will suffer severe domestic violence if she is returned to her country, violence from which her country will not protect her. This week, Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued a decision directing the Board of Immigration Appeals to reconsider the case.
If you are a member of the Wisconsin State Bar, beginning in November you will have free access to Fastcase. Fastcase is a searchable online database of federal and state law. The product overview at the Fastcase website makes the service look user-friendly. Its coverage is fairly deep too, including state cases back to 1950 or earlier.
I was wondering when a convenient but much lower-cost legal research service like this would become widely available. It seemed inevitable that it would eventually happen. I haven’t tried Fastcase yet, but I am going to do so and will follow up with my thoughts about the interface and more details about the coverage. In the meantime, I would be very interested to hear from anyone who already has experience using the service.