Oregon Legal Research Blog
I have a few extra Fastcase pilot project passwords to give out. (The application is at our webpage – at the bottom of the page, or here is the direct link.) You do not need to be an attorney to be eligible for this trial.
Washington County (Oregon) residents (and litigants with cases in Washington County courts) get priority but if passwords remain, other counties’ residents will be eligible, so send in your application, and tell me why you would like to participate. If I get a lot of applications, your database searching skills will be considered in determining eligibility, but curiosity and aptitude will be also.
This trial is NOT for the novice. I do NO hand-holding. The two of us who work in the Washington County Law Library serve a county with over 500,000 people: I do NOT offer Fastcase training for this pilot project. You will need to be comfortable with their excellent online tutorials and their telephone and email help services. (This level of (non) service on my part is intentional and part of the trial. Among other things, I want to know how easy it was for you to use this database.)
This database trial was originally a 6-month trial, now almost in its last month, so the instructions on the Application will be modified accordingly. Only ONE end-of-trial Questionnaire will be emailed to you, not 2-3. (Depending on responses, I may choose to extend this Fastcase trial another month or more. I would also like to try a similar trial with a different legal research database so stay tuned.)
But read on for what might be a better and an easier solution for you, depending on your legal research needs:
Did you know that you can use FREE a portion of the Fastcase database? Heretofore, keyword searching of case law for most jurisdictions was available only to people with access to (usually fairly pricey) subscription-only legal research databases.
Did you know that you can “keyword” search the law at the Public Library of Law? PLOL is offered free from Fastcase!
Use their Advanced Options drop-down menu to limit your search to Oregon (or whatever state you want to search) and specified years (1997 forward is free).