Fastcase has acquired the assets of Wolters Kluwer’s Loislaw, as Wolters Kluwer sunsets the legal research platform and transitions subscribers to Fastcase. Loislaw was an early pioneer in the provision of online legal research information and offers US federal and state law, continuing legal education materials, and other legal information. Wolters Kluwer acquired Loislaw in 2000 for $95 million (see Insights, 4 January 2001, Wolters Kluwer: Legal Superman Meets Loislaw?), but terms of the latest deal were not disclosed.
Fastcase is positioned at a lower price point within the legal research market compared to its larger competitors LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law. Despite challenging market conditions, Fastcase has added 100,000 new users a year for each of the last five years and now has over 800,000 users. The company was the first in the legal solutions market to launch mobile and tablet legal research apps, and consequently gained a first mover advantage that it has built on ever since. However, the rapid growth of Fastcase has largely been down to its strategy to sell wholesale to bar associations instead of retail to individual law firms.
Twenty-nine state bar associations now offer Fastcase to its members, enabling the bar associations to add value to attorneys’ membership. Fastcase’s closest competitor, Casemaker, uses the same wholesale model, but only serves around 200,000 attorneys.
Source: Outsell Insight
