From Cocktail Napkin to Global Platform: Fastcase-vLex, and Clio Unite to Democratize the Law

The recent acquisition of Fastcase-vLex by Clio for US $1 billion is more than a business transaction. It marks the moment when decades of purposeful innovation, guided by Fastcase and championed early by Spencer Trask & Co., converged to align artificial intelligence with the public good and open the law to everyone.

A Spencer Trask Mission Rooted in Access

Fastcase began as an idea sketched on a cocktail napkin. Co-founders Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal, and Spencer Trask & Co. Chairman, Kevin Kimberlin, saw lawyers drowning in documents and citizens priced out of justice. Their answer was a legal research engine built to put primary law at every lawyer’s fingertips and, ultimately, in every citizen’s hands. Spencer Trask recognized the potential from the start, providing the first and only institutional capital and steadfast encouragement to keep the mission of access front and center.

Building an AI Foundation

Long before generative AI dominated headlines, Fastcase treated artificial intelligence as a core strategy. Key milestones came rapidly:

  • 2017 – The team launched its AI Sandbox to experiment with large-scale text learning.
  • 2018 – Acquiring Docket Alarm added predictive analytics drawn from millions of court filings.
  • 2020 – Bringing Judicata into the fold introduced deep semantic mapping of case law, often described as a legal genome.
  • 2023 – Merging with vLex created the world’s most comprehensive legal library and produced Vincent AI, the first tool able to draft arguments across jurisdictions while citing authoritative sources.
 

Each step refined the technology’s alignment with legal ethics and transparency, ensuring AI served practitioners and the public rather than replacing judgment or compromising trust.

The Power of a Unified Platform

On June 30, 2025, vLex-Fastcase joined Clio, the leading cloud practice-management platform used by more than two hundred thousand law firms. The combination couples the richest legal data set on earth with the workflow hub where lawyers manage their practice every day. Lawyers will research, draft, file, invoice, and communicate within a single, AI-enhanced environment that keeps human expertise in the loop.

For large firms, advanced analytics become part of daily decision-making. For solo attorneys and community clinics, sophisticated tools once reserved for elite practices arrive at accessible prices. Most importantly, individuals and small businesses who have historically faced legal problems without counsel gain new pathways to timely, affordable answers.

Expanding the Reach of Justice

The law is the operating system of society. Yet research shows that more than three-quarters of Americans facing legal issues do not hire a lawyer, and the gap is wider in many other countries. By weaving Fastcase’s AI, vLex’s global content, and Clio’s intuitive workflows into one platform, the new Clio vows to close that justice gap. Every precedent, statute, and regulation is being translated into actionable guidance, delivered in plain language, and verified by citations so trust remains intact.

An Aspirational Future

What began with three innovators and Spencer Trask & Co. now stands poised to reshape a trillion-dollar industry and, more importantly, empower billions of people to understand and use the law. Spencer Trask’s early belief in Fastcase set this mission in motion. Today that vision scales worldwide through Clio. The journey proves that when capital, technology, and purpose align, access to justice is not a distant ideal but an achievable reality waiting at the next click.

 

 

“None of this would have been possible without the early support and steadfast counsel of Spencer Trask & Co., the first and only institutional investor in Fastcase.” (July 2, 2025)

Ed Walters, Fastcase Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, vLex
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The Immune Response Corporation

Revolution in Immunotherapy

DISCOVERY – Non-infectious viral vaccines.

INNOVATOR – In the history of medicine, few figures have had as profound an impact on human health and wellbeing as Dr. Jonas Salk. His polio vaccine breakthrough was the culmination of centuries of research, dating back to Louis Pasteur discovering inoculation. However, Salk’s method was different. He found a way to protect people from viruses without giving them the very disease the vaccine was designed to prevent.

Using this no-infection method, Salk worked with Kevin Kimberlin of Spencer Trask to develop cancer vaccines and an immunotherapeutic to slow or prevent AIDS. They patented and conducted preclinical studies on a cancer vaccine that demonstrated a startling 90% protection against lethal malignancies. 

IMPACT – A fusion of dendritic cells and the cancer antigen, their technology formed the basis for the first FDA-approved cell-based immunotherapy. Over 40,000 men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer have received the treatment, and it appears especially effective for African-American men who receive a 48% improved survival benefit compared to white men.

The team and facility making this immunotherapy also made clinical and commercial supplies of the first approved gene therapy, the CAT-T drug Kymriah.

The first approved cell-base immunotherapy and gene therapy prompted the FDA Commissioner to say, “New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine and create an inflection point in our ability to treat and even cure many intractable illnesses.”

The noninfectious vaccine approach developed by Jonas Salk eliminated polio from the developed countries, his flu vaccine mitigated the effects of influenza for the past 75 years, and finally, the cancer vaccine developed at his Immune Response Corporation led the way to gene, cell-based, and immune therapy innovations that will impact human health for generations. In summary, Salk released the last step in enabling the most important preventative medicine – non-infectious viral vaccination.