“The legal profession has been a late adopter of technology, but lawyers are gaining more of an appetite for artificial intelligence tools in recent years,” said vLex CEO Lluís Faus. “Bringing these two highly successful businesses together will help democratize the law for legal professionals worldwide through a dynamic and robust platform that improves legal research accuracy, efficiency, and affordability.”

The new combined entity will be called vLex Group, and its products will retain the name of vLex in global markets and Fastcase in the U.S. The company, which has offices in the United States, Europe, the U.K., Asia, and Latin America, will combine management teams and invest in unified global products based on the complementary strengths of both firms. It will maintain headquarters offices in Washington, D.C., Miami, and Barcelona. JEGI CLARITY, a leading M&A advisory firm for the legal, media, marketing, information and technology industries, represented Fastcase in this transaction.

Each company has been a disruptive innovator in highly consolidated markets for legal information and will offer unprecedented scale in legal tech, including the following:

• The new company will reach the majority of lawyers in the U.S. (~1.1 million subscribers out of 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S.) in partnership with state bar associations and include legal materials from more than 100 countries around the world.
• The combined library contains over one billion legal documents, including judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, court rules, docket sheets, briefs, pleadings, motions, authored treatises, and legal news articles.
• vLex was named “Overall Legal Research Solution Provider of the Year” for its AI tools in the 2022 LegalTech Breakthrough Awards Program.
• Fastcase has twice been named New Product of the Year by the American Association of Law Libraries.

“Our missions could not be more aligned, and by combining two of the world’s most successful legal technology disruptors, we are bringing much-needed innovation to an industry ready for a scaled alternative,” said Fastcase President Phil Rosenthal. “With both companies having more than 20 years of organic growth, the strategic support and financial backing of Oakley Capital and Bain Capital Credit will dramatically accelerate our work. Our goal is to be the most frequently used, comprehensive, and trustworthy resource for law firms of all sizes in any part of the world.”

Large Language Models (LLM) and Law

News of the merger comes when competing large language models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Bard, create a more competitive market for generative AI.

“With the rapid proliferation of LLM models, we are in a new era where content is king,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “With the merger of vLex and Fastcase, nobody has a more extensive global law library than we do. This is the biggest legal data corpus ever assembled, including highly valuable structured data with industry-standard tags and analytics. The combined library is the crown jewel of LLMs and the ultimate training data set for legal AI.”

The companies are not newcomers to legal AI. vLex created one of the first AI assistants for legal research, called Vincent. It has long used an internal AI tool called Iceberg to generate structure in its own data and for law firms. Fastcase’s Docket Alarm product is one of the first legal tech companies to integrate OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, and both Fastcase and Docket Alarm use AI to create structure and tags in legal documents. The companies will use their combined financial strength to accelerate growth and to invest more in the frontiers of artificial intelligence in law.

About vLex

vLex is a global legal intelligence platform that provides legal professionals with access to the most extensive collection of legal and regulatory information worldwide, all on one award-winning and unique platform. The company utilizes cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence and data analytics, to help millions of users access the most relevant and accurate information. For more information about vLex, visit @vLex on Twitter or at www.vlex.com.

About Fastcase

Fastcase is a comprehensive legal intelligence company founded in 1999 and based in Washington, D.C. Partnering with the bar associations of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Fastcase serves more than 1.1 million lawyers worldwide. The company provides an innovative research suite of primary law, dockets, treatises, legal blogs, analytics, workflow tools, and legal news. For more information about Fastcase’s legal tools, visit the company on Twitter at @Fastcase or visit www.fastcase.com.

About Oakley Capital

Oakley Capital is the partner of choice for entrepreneurs and management teams with the ambition to build successful, global businesses. With a diverse team of over 140 professionals across five locations including London, Munich and Milan, the firm backs high-growth, mid-market companies across Europe. It has deep sector-expertise across Technology, Consumer and Education and a track-record of supporting businesses accelerating their growth with proven value creation strategies, including M&A, digitization, talent management and internationalization. Its unique origination capabilities help unearth attractive investment opportunities yielding consistently strong returns for all stakeholders. To date the firm has delivered gross realized returns of 4x MM and 67% IRR across all funds. In 2023, Oakley raised a record €2.85 billion for Oakley Capital Fund V, bringing their total AUM to €8 billion.

About Bain Capital Credit

Bain Capital Credit is a leading global credit specialist with approximately $42 billion in assets under management. Bain Capital Credit invests across the credit spectrum and in credit‐related strategies, including leveraged loans, high‐yield bonds, structured products, private middle market loans, bespoke capital solutions, distressed securities and assets, non‐performing loans, hard assets and equities. Our team of more than 95 investment professionals creates value through rigorous, independent analysis of thousands of corporate issuers around the world. In addition to credit, Bain Capital Credit invests across asset classes including private equity, public equity, venture capital and real estate, and leverages the firm’s shared platform to capture opportunities in strategic areas of focus. Bain Capital Credit’s dedicated Private Credit Group focuses on providing complete financing solutions to businesses with EBITDA between $10 million and $150 million located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Our dedicated global team affords us the ability to diligence the most complex situations and provide private capital to those companies.

Jacob Silverman is a cryptocurrency savant and Jeopardy champion with 35,000 Twitter followers and stories to tell.  A few years ago, the 38-year-old recalled his days as a “boomerang child” during the Great Recession.  Despite being raised in privilege – “son of lawyers, private schools, no college debt” – he’d ended up moving back to his parents’ basement, “a linoleum warren of adolescent artifacts and piles of books that I ordered from eBay when stoned late at night.” 

He also had “a childish infatuation with gadgets” and, it turns out, shiny objects.  Which made Silverman perhaps just the person to get inside the head of another cryptocurrency savant with a dorm-room lifestyle:  Sam Bankman-Fried.

The wild-haired founder of FTX, the mastermind behind what may be the greatest financial fraud in the history of mankind, became Silverman’s obsession. 

And his quarry.

Silverman, an author and a contributing editor at the New Republic, has seen his journalistic career improve in the months following FTX’s implosion and Bankman-Fried’s arrest.  Next week, he’s launching a new podcast, The Naked Emperor, that promises “a wild ride in search of an answer to the question: ‘How did Sam Bankman-Fried happen?'”

It’s a question that, in retrospect, might seem logical to ask — particularly given the explosion of litigation that resulted.  Most recently, on March 2, the new managers at FTX told the Delaware bankruptcy court they had identified a deficit of $8.9 billion in customer funds that cannot be accounted for.  Four days later, they filed suit in Delaware against crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments to claw back some of the billions.  Grayscale, in turn, is suing the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case argued on March 7 in the D.C. federal appeals court.  And on and on. 

FTX and related entities have been sued dozens of times since the implosion. Thirty-one suits were filed against FTX entities in November 2022 alone. The cases are largely filed in Delaware bankruptcy court, but actions have been filed in state and federal courts nationwide.

FTX has been represented by a constellation of law firms, including Landis Rath & Cobb; Fenwick & West; Holland & Knight; Richards, Layton & Finger; Sullivan & Cromwell; White & Case; and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

But if Freedom of Information Act requests to the SEC are any indication, few were asking about FTX before it cratered and the cryptoworld blew up.

More than 13 months before the world found out what a crook Bankman-Fried might be, Silverman, a freelance journalist, was nosing around.  Silverman owns the distinction of being the first person to file a FOIA request with the SEC to find out what the agency knew about FTX. 

FOIA requests to the federal government can be an important early warning of bad publicity, litigation to come, or, in the case of SBF and FTX, something much worse.  PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows.  Of particular interest are news media requests, because investigations in progress can significantly affect stocks and markets once the stories hit.

According to FOIAengine, Silverman’s FOIA request was filed on September 30, 2021.  Fittingly for this particular request, the SEC’s description of his request is cryptic:  “FTX or FTX Trading Limited.”  That’s it.  And the agency’s response is equally terse:  “Request Status:  Closed.  Agency Decision:  Closed for Other Reasons.” 

By then, questions were being raised about whether the SEC would regulate the roiling crypto marketplace.  It would be another seven months – still, long before the crisis hit – before anyone else filed a FOIA request with the SEC about SBF or FTX.  Notably, the second requester was, like Silverman, an independent journalist.  The early requests about FTX and SBF didn’t come from established media outlets like the TV networks, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or Bloomberg.  Only after FTX shut down did those big players join the tidal wave of FOIA requests.  

The SEC’s FOIA office sent back its official response 10 weeks later, on December 10, 2021. “We conducted a thorough search of the SEC’s various systems of records, but did not locate or identify any records responsive to your request,” a SEC FOIA research specialist told Silverman. No records about FTX. And nothing about Alameda Research, FTX’s conjoined cryptocurrency trading firm, which went bankrupt along with FTX.

“No records,” Silverman says now, “seems a little ridiculous.” The SEC’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.

By mid-June of last year, the S&P 500 fell into bear-market territory, and Silverman was still shadowing Bankman-Fried.  June 13, the day the market buckled, was horrible not just for stocks but also for cryptocurrency, which by then had suffered a collective $2 trillion wipeout.  Changpeng “CZ” Zhaoon, the CEO of Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, tried to reassure customers.  He tweeted that Binance was temporarily suspending Bitcoin withdrawals “due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog.” 

Silverman tweeted slyly in response:  “They have to find a volunteer, preferably someone small and lithe, to send in there and remove the clog. It takes time.”

Bankman-Fried, watching the exchange, didn’t see the humor.  He tweeted back, directly to Silverman:  “Likely just a technical issue.” 

Coming next from FOIAengine:  Elon Musk:  Man, Myth, and FOIA.

John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere.  He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis.  His most recent book is The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist.  Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013.  Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly.  FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (www.PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller.  Learn more about FOIAengine here.  To subscribe to FOIAengine, click here. 

Write to  John A. Jenkins at JJenkins@LawStreetMedia.com. 

Published six times a year, The Journal of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Law (RAIL) is one of the first legal journals focused exclusively on exploring how robotics and machine learning are impacting our world. Subjects include drones, self-driving vehicles, biometric privacy, blockchain technology, HR software algorithms, and many other fascinating topics where the law is still highly malleable. 

Enjoy a FREE sample of RAIL: Federal Circuit Decision Casts Doubt on Availability of Patent Protection for AI-Generated Inventions by Robert A. McFarlane and Rosanna W. Gan, in which the authors discuss a recent federal circuit court decision holding that an artificial intelligence system cannot be named as an inventor on a U.S. patent. To learn more click here to instantly download your free article.

Click here to purchase Volume 6, Issue 2 of RAIL

Annual print subscribers receive hard copies of each issue, as well as digital access via the Fastcase legal research platform. Click here to purchase an annual print subscription to RAIL.

Published six times annually,The Journal of Federal Agency Action offers readers a wealth of information and analysis related to ongoing changes in the federal regulatory space.

Available for Purchase in the Fastcase Bookstore for $70

Topics covered include securities, finance, banking, tax, labor/employment, defense, cybersecurity, procurement, and more, with each issue covering a wide range of timely and important areas of interest to attorneys and law firms, in-house counsel, corporate compliance officers, government agencies and their counsel, senior business executives, and anyone interested in federal agency actions.

Enjoy a FREE sample of The Journal of Federal Agency Action: U.S. Justice Department Announces Substantial Revisions to Corporate Enforcement Policy by Andrew S. Boutros, David N. Kelley, Andrew J. Levander, Vincent H Cohen Jr., and D. Brett Kohlhofer, in which the authors review new guidelines announced recently by the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecutors to use when determining how to assess and treat corporate offenders. To learn more click here to instantly download your free article.  

AUSTIN, TX and WASHINGTON, DC (January 18, 2023) – Fastcase and the State Bar of Texas are extending their partnership to provide all active State Bar members with free access to Fastcase case law alerts in thirteen practice areas.

Since 2014, State Bar of Texas members have received unlimited access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research content service as a bar member benefit. In renewing their long-term association with Fastcase, State Bar of Texas and Fastcase leaders committed to building out the member benefit to provide additional resources. Earlier this year, member access was expanded to include briefs, pleadings, motions, and orders sourced by Docket Alarm and within the Fastcase7 platform. Today, the member benefit is further expanded to include Texas Case Law Alerts.

The expanded Case Law Alert partnership provides bar members with daily alerts and case summaries in thirteen practice areas including Family Law, Business Law, and Personal Injury Law by drawing on new Texas trial, and appellate courts.

Bar members can access the additional resources by signing up on the Texas Case Alerts sign-up page (fastcase.com).

Legal researchers can extend their capabilities in Fastcase by opting into integrated products, such as Full Court Press publications, data analytics, and docket updates via Docket Alarm, bankruptcy and workflow tools through NextChapter, lawyer directory information from Modern Attorney, and legal news via Law Street Media, plus access to licensed secondary materials through the ABA and other leading publishers.

About the State Bar of Texas
The State Bar of Texas is an administrative agency of the judicial branch of state government that provides educational programs for the legal profession and the public, administers the minimum continuing legal education program for attorneys, and manages the attorney disciplinary system. For more information, follow the State Bar of Texas on Twitter at @statebaroftexas or visit texasbar.com.

About Fastcase

Fastcase is a comprehensive legal intelligence company, founded in 1999 and based in Washington, D.C. Partnering with the bar associations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Fastcase serves more than 1.1 million lawyers from around the world. The company provides an innovative research suite of primary law, dockets, treatises, legal blogs, analytics, workflow tools, and legal news. For more information about Fastcase’s smarter legal tools, visit the company on Twitter at @Fastcase or www.fastcase.com.

While law school and bar exam courses may prepare young attorneys for legal analysis, many entry-level lawyers are caught off guard by the transition to professional life.

That’s where New Lawyer Launch comes in, sharing foundational, timeless, and practical advice that will prove invaluable to recent law graduates. With strong backgrounds in mentorship, Susan Smith Blakely and her noteworthy contributors guide readers through strategies critical to achieving satisfying and successful careers.

Buy New Lawyer Launch: the Handbook for Young Lawyers for only $29

From making positive first impressions, developing productive and professional work habits, building effective business networks and becoming comfortable with promoting work and professional talents, to maintaining admirable reputations, serving others, and advocating for the wider community, it is all here to help young lawyers achieve their goals in a profession that sometimes can seem illusory.

To learn more about this newly published Full Court Press title, download the Table of Contents and share with your colleagues and friends who are new to the legal industry.

Clearbrief was founded in 2020 by Jacqueline Schafer (Fastcase 50 2022, ABA Women of Legaltech 2022, WA State Bar APEX Award Winner 2021) to give lawyers the ability to craft winning arguments that are grounded in the facts in a fraction of the time. A first-of-its-kind solution, Clearbrief saves litigation attorneys upwards of seven hours a week on time-consuming tasks. Its patented AI takes legal documents and automatically finds and displays any citations to the factual source documents cited (such as exhibits, depositions, transcripts), as well as caselaw, statutes, and regulations.

Now in partnership with Fastcase, Clearbrief is building upon its mission to empower lawyers everywhere by expanding its coverage of caselaw that is available to be automatically displayed within the document itself. Attorneys, legal writers, and judges can reference factual and legal citations effortlessly without the need to switch to a separate window or tab to read the underlying case.

Then, when a Clearbrief user is done drafting in Word, they can share an interactive, hyperlinked version of the pleading with the judge and the parties to facilitate their ability to review both the law and the facts cited in a pleading. You can see examples at clearbrief.com/examples

“Clearbrief’s partnership with Fastcase is furthering our goal to provide more visibility into every single underlying source referenced in legal documents,” said Schafer. Clearbrief users do not need a Fastcase login in order to view sources from the Fastcase database. “We love that Fastcase is readily available to millions of attorneys through bar memberships and that they have a shared commitment to making the law more accessible to the public.”

“Our vision for Fastcase is that law should be like electric power: widely available at affordable, transparent prices, to empower all kinds of legal appliances,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “Clearbrief is such an amazing drafting tool, and we’re really happy that we can power its users to even greater success.”

Fastcase is a premiere legal research platform with more than 80 bar association partners and more than 1.2 million subscribers. Fastcase is a comprehensive legal intelligence company, founded in 1999 and based in Washington, D.C. Partnering with virtually every state bar association, Fastcase has democratized the law, making sure that lawyers and their clients have meaningful access to America’s operating system. The company provides an innovative research suite of primary law, dockets, treatises, legal blogs, analytics, workflow tools, and legal news.

In collaboration, Clearbrief and Fastcase are giving attorneys at firms big and small the ability to leverage legal technology to find the best evidence to win cases. Clearbrief is also proud to have partnerships in place with the Free Law Project and Justia. Clearbrief’s AI and our partners’ comprehensive law libraries will help law firms complete litigation tasks more efficiently without spending time and resources that should be focused on the business. 

To try out Clearbrief, visit https://clearbrief.com/signup or get Clearbrief directly from the Microsoft App store: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200002942?src=office&tab=Overview.

Follow Clearbrief on Linkedin and Twitter at @Clearbriefai. For more information on Fastcase, visit https://fastcase.com or on Twitter at @Fastcase

Washington, DC (December 6, 2022) –  Full Court Press, the publishing arm of Fastcase, today announced it is providing MARC catalog records through a partnership with Cassidy Cataloguing Services. The partnership is ongoing and the libraries that subscribe to Cassidy will receive ongoing MARC record updates.

To date, Cassidy has catalogued titles available in Fastcase from Full Court Press, the American Bar Association, North Carolina Bar Association, Virginia CLE, and others.

MARC (machine-readable cataloging) standards are a set of computerized digital formats for the description of items catalogued by libraries, allowing bibliographic information to be shared freely between systems. Cassidy has been producing MARC catalog records for publishers, law firm and law school libraries, state and county libraries, and library organizations since 1985.

Cassidy creates records that include helpful metadata information for different legal publishers’ catalogs, for use in library systems and so libraries can know what content is available as it is published. Records are fully searchable and contain: tables of contents, notes, Library of Congress subject headings, series information, and more.

“We are excited to reveal that we now offer high-quality MARC records for all of our titles through the ABA, North Carolina Bar Association, and many in-house publications, and we’re looking forward to growing this with other bar associations soon,” said Full Court Press Publisher Morgan Morrissette Wright. “Making it easier for attorneys and libraries to sift through countless mounds of data to find the specific resource they’re looking for has been integral to Fastcase. Adding MARC records for Full Court Press titles is the latest way we are advancing the practice of law for our users.”

“As we continue to expand the availability of MARC records within the legal industry, it was important for us to partner with a company that understands the needs of law libraries and appreciates the benefits of technology,” said Cassidy President Joni Cassidy. “We look forward to the synergies that allow us to offer many more searchable records for titles in the years to come.”

MARC records are available per individual title or as a group with a discount. They can be purchased and will be delivered through Cassidy Cataloguing Services.

For samples or more information on adding these records to your library, contact Megan Staloff, Cassidy’s Client Relations Specialist at (973) 586-3200.

About Fastcase

Fastcase is a comprehensive legal intelligence company, founded in 1999 and based in Washington, D.C. Partnering with the bar associations of almost every state and the District of Columbia, Fastcase serves more than 1.2 million lawyers from around the world. The company provides an innovative research suite of primary law, dockets, treatises, legal blogs, analytics, workflow tools, and legal news. For more information about Fastcase’s smarter legal tools, visit the company on Twitter at @Fastcase or visit www.fastcase.com.

The AILA Law Journal has come a long way since its April 2019 launch. At the time of the publication of the November 2022 issue, the AILA Law Journal will be 8 issues old.

I am proud to be the Editor in Chief of the AILA Law Journal at the time of the release of this November 2022 issue. The AILA Law Journal plays an invaluable role by curating high quality articles that guide attorneys to advance novel and innovative arguments on behalf of their clients.  For the AILA Law Journal’s success and contributions, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, who so successfully launched the publication and led it until recently. I hope to inspire attorneys, law students, and others, as Shoba did, to contribute articles in the immigration field that will not just benefit attorneys, but will also help to shape immigration laws.

I really look forward to working with a fabulous team of editors to take the AILA Law Journal to the next phase. Being Editor in Chief gets me thinking about some of the important issues of the day. I have been consistently writing on contemporary immigration topics, and taking on this new role completely aligns with my passion to express a point of view or highlight an important development for AILA colleagues and clients.  For example, to what extent can the Executive Branch allow noncitizens to remain and work in the US when there is no explicit provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) covering these categories of noncitizens? Two courts of appeals have ruled differently in recent decisions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (“Washtech) v. the U.S. Department of Homeland Security addressed the question of F-1 students and whether they could remain in the U.S. after graduation for practical training. Citing DHS’ authority under INA § 214(a)(1) and the long history of post-graduation practical training, the court upheld Optional Practical Training that has been granted to students after they graduate in the US. The Fifth Circuit in Texas v. US confronted a different issue – that of young people who came to the U.S. and whether they could remain in the country through deferred action. Finding that DACA exceeds DHS’ inherent authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion, the court struck down the program, though deferred action is a well-established practice like OPT. Although the Washtech case dealt with students, the D.C. Circuit’s decision can serve as a template for the Supreme Court to uphold the authority for other categories of noncitizens to remain in the U.S., including DACA recipients.

I hope the AILA Law Journal can attract articles that explore themes like this in depth. I also look forward to articles in the AILA Law Journal being cited by federal courts. Some day, I hope that the AILA Law Journal can organize a symposium attracting both scholars and practical lawyers to present papers that will then get published in a dedicated issue of the AILA Law Journal.

It is very important for lawyers to write and express their views. The AILA Law Journal is here to encourage this. And for those who do not have the time or inclination, it is hoped that the excellent articles in the AILA Law Journal from one issue to the next will provide food for thought to all – lawyers, policy makers and judges – that will result in fair and sensible immigration policies and outcomes.

****

AILA members can access the journal for free as a member benefit through the AILA website. Without membership to AILA, you can purchase the digital version of the newest AILA Law journal for $60 or purchase a one-year print subscription for $99. 

And we encourage all of you to share your insights for a forthcoming edition – the call for submissions for our Fall 2023 edition opens on December 1, 2022, with manuscripts due by May 15, 2023.

A handy resource for both fund sponsors and investors alike, the 2022 edition of Hedge Funds: Formation, Operation, and Regulation delves deep into an ever-evolving industry with an expert lens.

Explore taxation, regulation, hedge fund investment strategies, regulatory requirements, and hedge fund management company creation, with this comprehensive guide. To learn more about the topics covered download your free copy of the Table of Contents.

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Hedge Funds: Formation, Operation, and Regulation

About the Authors

Offering an unparalleled understanding of the legal and operational aspects of the hedge fund industry, the SRZ authors represent a broad range of practices and include investment management partners Stephanie Breslow, David Efron, David Nissenbaum, Paul Roth, Jennifer Dunn, Christopher Hilditch, Daniel Hunter, and Jason Kaplan; investment management regulatory & compliance partners Marc Elovitz and Anna Maleva-Otto; employment & employee benefits partners Mark Brossman and David Cohen, and retired partner Holly Weiss; finance & derivatives partners Daniel Oshinsky and Craig Stein; mergers & acquisitions partners Ian Levin and Peter Halasz; and tax partners Philippe Benedict, Shlomo Twerski and David Griffel. The authors also received significant contributions from litigation attorney Betty Santangelo, special counsel Patrick Dundas, and tax partner David Wermuth.