Fastcase and the Bad Law Bot

As a 1L you learn all about citator services. You even learn a new verb, “Shepardize.” But as you get to the end of the year you may have a class where the law librarians introduced you to Fastcase. According to their website, Fastcase  “was established in 1999 to democratize the law and encourage smarter legal practice with data and visualization tools.” As a law student you have access to Fastcase via the law library’s website.

One of the tools available in Fastcase is a citator called the Bad Law Bot. The Bad Law Bot is possibly the coolest citator. Officially, the Bad Law Bot was an enhancement to Fastcase’s Authority Check feature “to show you where courts have noted that a case has been treated negatively...Courts will cite negative histories of cases within their opinions. ‘Bad Law Bot’ uses algorithms to find negative citation history.” Unofficially, the Bad Law Bot is a cute little robot.

For a review of Fastcase, check out Lawyerist. For more information about last year’s merger of Fastcase and Casemaker, check out this blog post. If you want to learn a bit more about how to use Fastcase and the Bad Law Bot, email the librarians at lawlibraryhelp@rwu.edu or check out this Fastcase Support website.