SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Casetext, the San Francisco-based company revolutionizing legal research, has just added two massive databases to its award-winning platform. These new features, Black Letter Law and Holdings, use legal informatics and natural language processing (NLP) to provide researchers with fast and easy access to key rulings and common law doctrines. Collectively, these tools empower attorneys to perform cutting-edge legal research on a single platform that combines the trustworthiness and authority of primary case law with the ease-of-use and accessibility of secondary sources.
Many attorneys seek to familiarize themselves with fundamental legal precepts before diving into more fact-specific, nuanced research. Black Letter Law meets that demand by helping attorneys easily identify well-settled legal propositions. With Casetext’s Black Letter Law, attorneys get the utility of a conventional legal treatise via a Google-like experience—a well-designed, easy-to-use, all-in-one destination for search.
“Black Letter Law enables our users to quickly identify axiomatic statements of law, which is particularly useful for lawyers researching outside of their core practice areas, as well as for litigators hunting for foundational case law to support a brief or oral argument,” said Jake Heller, co-founder and CEO of Casetext. “NLP processing allows us to harness the wisdom contained in many decades of American jurisprudence to deliver clear, concise statements of law to our users in seconds.”
Similarly, Casetext’s new Holdings feature is the largest searchable collection of concise case summaries ever assembled. To create Holdings, Casetext applied a tactic they call “judicial language processing,” exploiting patterns within the case law corpus to excerpt summaries directly from judicial opinions. Holdings is invaluable for any attorney looking to quickly familiarize herself with the crux of a judicial opinion and nimbly compare and contrast similar holdings across a particular area of law.
“It is as if we crowdsourced case summaries from legions of judges and their clerks, placing the fruit of countless hours of effort at our users’ fingertips,” explained Pablo Arredondo, chief legal research officer and co-founder of Casetext. “Much of what Casetext does is powered by artificial intelligence, but when it comes to concisely summarizing a case’s holding, AI can’t hold a candle to judicial intelligence.”
Researchers can access both Black Letter Law and Holdings through a keyword search of Casetext’s comprehensive state and federal legal database, or via CARA, Casetext’s AI-powered legal research service, which facilitates research tailored to specific litigation matters.
Beyond the benefits to the individual researcher, Black Letter Law and Holdings can assist law firms in responding to pressure from clients to cut down on costs, especially in legal research. Black Letter Law and Holdings help law firms increase efficiency in legal research while maintaining the best quality representation for their clients.
Casetext’s customers include leading law firms such as Quinn Emanuel, Fenwick & West, DLA Piper, O’Melveny & Myers, Baker Donelson and Ogletree Deakins, among others. Casetext was recently recognized by CB Insights as one of the most promising artificial intelligence companies of 2018 (the only legal research company to make the list), and on the Financial Times’ list of law firms and legal service providers commended for innovation in 2017. Casetext’s CARA technology was named New Product of the Year by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), which recognized the innovative platform for improving access to legal information and the legal research process.
About Casetext:
Casetext is a legal technology company that provides cutting-edge information and research services to litigation practices, including leading AmLaw 100 law firms. Its award-winning software, CARA, automates key legal research tasks by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to analyze litigation documents, and uses that information to algorithmically query the law. This novel form of search allows litigators to find—in seconds—highly relevant authority that many hours of traditional research can miss. CARA is powered by the Casetext research database, which offers users access to a full library of federal and state law, annotated by expert analysis from leading attorneys and law firms. Customers, who include some of the world’s largest law firms, rely on Casetext to help them provide the best litigation services for clients. For more information, visit www.casetext.com or contact our team at contact@casetext.com.
