New to Casetext? Here are all the details on the unique capabilities and features we’ve built into our platform, used by millions of lawyers (and non-lawyers) to research and write about the law. Our mission is to “free the law” and make it super easy for anyone to quickly understand not only the text of the law but all the critical context, summaries, and key passages that can make the difference for you, your firm, and your clients.

Read on to find out how Casetext helps you:

I. Access the law for free

II. Supercharge your legal research

III. Use your content to build your professional reputation

IV. Contribute to the world's first community-built citator

I. On Casetext, Accessing The Law Is Free.

Our entire database of nearly 11 million laws and statutes, updated daily, is available to you for free -- and always will be -- because we believe the law shouldn’t be locked behind a paywall.

The Casetext database includes federal published and unpublished cases (Supreme Court, appellate, and district court) going back to at least 1925 (and often much earlier), as well as appellate cases for all 50 states, updated daily. You can also search all federal statutes and regulations, as well as statutes from several states (and we’re adding more every day).

II. Supercharge Your Research

Find Caselaw, Commentary, and More Using Your Standard Search Terms

From the search bar on any page, you can search for caselaw, statutes, and legal commentary, or for organizations and users on Casetext. You can sort your results by relevance, date, or number of citations, and filter by jurisdiction (federal and/or specific states).

You can use the same methods, search terms and queries already familiar to you, including searching by citation, title, and keywords, in natural language or using sophisticated boolean operators. Learn more about searching the Casetext database here.

Case Law + The Most Critical Context, All In One Place

Once you access all the features we’ve built in to every case, you’ll understand how Casetext can literally change the way you practice. With the tools available on Casetext, you’ll be able to more deeply understand a case, more easily than ever before. Casetext’s advanced and unique legal research capabilities and features include:

• Summaries from Subsequent Cases. Find out what the decision is about with help from judges who have cited it in their opinions.
• Key Passages From This Case. Helps you understand which passages within the case are most important, based on how often they’ve been quoted in the cases and articles in the Casetext library. This will give you a better sense of what important issues the case discusses, and which passages are likely to be most useful in your research.
• The Heatmap. Shows you at-a-glance which paragraphs and sections of a case have been cited and discussed the most and how often.
• Sentence-Level Insights. Use the knowledge and commentary from the broader legal community, and from thought-leaders and leading law firms specifically interested in this case, to better understand a particular sentence or passage in a case.
• Citing Cases. Sort by Court, Depth of Treatment, or Date to find out how the case has been treated, and what you should read next.
• Share, Save, and Download. In just one click, you can bookmark this case for later access on Casetext, download a high-quality PDF document of the case, or share it with your colleagues.

For more on how these features can help you master the case law you’re researching, click here.

III. Use Your Content to Build Your Professional Reputation

A community of hundreds of thousands want to hear from you. We help you reach them.

LegalPad, our publishing platform designed specifically for legal writing, makes it easier than ever to write about the law and share your insights and expertise. With LegalPad, you can easily quote from a case (automatically including a citation with pincite), embed legal briefs and other media, and beautifully format your writing. (More about how to publish on LegalPad here.)

Even better, when you publish on LegalPad, you’ll automatically reach a built-in and highly-targeted audience of researchers, including peers and potential clients. You can publish your post to one or more of Casetext’s topic area communities, and, more importantly, your post will appear in the Insights section alongside the cases and statutes you discuss, putting it right in front of researchers who are interested in the issues you’re discussing.

Showcase Your Commentary on Your Casetext Profile

All the content you publish on Casetext will be visible and accessible on your Casetext profile, where you can showcase your knowledge and provide more information about yourself. Learn how to fill out and edit your Casetext profile here.

Featured Pages to Promote Your Firm or Organization

Law firms and other organizations interested in sharing their content can sign up for Featured Pages, which, like a Casetext profile, provide a central resource to highlight your firm’s content and provide information about your firm to potential clients.

Featured Pages also provide an opportunity for you to rejuvenate your firm’s existing content. If your firm has an existing blog or a website with legal analysis by your attorneys, you can automatically republish that content on Casetext and bring a brand new, highly targeted audience of interested researchers (including in-house counsel, attorneys at peer firms, and law students) to that content. Since it will be linked to the law, anyone researching a case that an attorney at your firm has written about will be directed to your firm’s content as a source of valuable insights. You can find out more about how it works here.

If you’re interested in setting up a Featured Page for your law firm, school or company -- and republishing your content on Casetext -- just contact our Head of Partnerships, Anand Upadhye, at partnerships@casetext.com.

Take a complete tour of publishing on Casetext here.

IV. WeCite: A Legal Citator Built by the Legal Community

The Legal Citator That is Helping to Free the Law

WeCite is the world’s first and only community-built legal citator, and a huge step forward in the movement to make the law free and accessible. A WeCite concisely describes the relationship between one decision and another earlier decision that it cites as Positive, Referencing, Distinguishing, or Negative. These case relationships are classified by lawyers, professors, law librarians, and law students, and reviewed by our experienced moderators. See for yourself.

If you’re interested in becoming a WeCite moderator, you can apply here.

Special Opportunities for Law Students

Law students are key players in the WeCite movement. Each semester, law students can register to participate in the WeCite contest, in which schools and individual students compete for the most points to earn a slot on the WeCite leaderboard. Along the way, you will practice reading cases and understanding case relationships, and you’ll earn prizes including a gift card for completing your very first WeCite, professional opportunities, and free textbooks next semester for the top WeCiter.

Law students who are interested in becoming leaders in the movement to free the law can apply to become a Casetext Student Ambassador, and help bring the WeCite project to law schools nationwide.

Learn more about the WeCite project here.

About Casetext

Casetext was founded by Stanford Law grad and former litigation associate Jake Heller, with the mission of making the law free and accessible. After working as an attorney for several years, he decided it was time to leave practice and start working on the social justice problem that had bothered him throughout his time in the legal field: that the law itself is expensive to access and difficult to understand. Since then, Casetext’s team of lawyers, engineers, and lawyer/engineers have been working hard to free the law and, in the process, make legal research and publishing better than ever.

Questions?

We’re here to answer any questions, any time. Just email contact@casetext.com.