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CanLII
What it is
CanLII is a nonprofit service that provides free online access to Canadian court decisions, tribunal decisions, and legislative documents. Its collections cover judgments from Canadian courts, decisions from many federal and provincial administrative tribunals, consolidated statutes and regulations, and annual statutes for Canadian jurisdictions. Search supports full text, title, citation, and note-up queries, with filters, facets, and sorting. RefLex links cited decisions and legislation available on the site. The Commentary collection includes secondary legal materials such as books, journals, articles, and reports; CanLII Connects features community case commentary and summaries. A free myCanLII account lets users save and organize research in folders and set alerts. Search+ accepts natural-language questions and returns results with contextual extracts and relevance indicators; it requires a free myCanLII account and has a daily usage limit. The site serves legal professionals and the general public. Its terms prohibit systematic downloading of published documents, including through crawlers, plug-ins, extensions, and connectors.
For and against
For
- Free access to Canadian legal information.
- Search includes full text, title, citation, and note-up.
- RefLex links cited decisions and legislation.
- myCanLII supports folders and research alerts.
- Coverage includes federal and provincial materials.
Against
- Search+ has a daily usage limit.
- Search+ requires a free myCanLII account.
- Terms prohibit systematic downloading of published documents.
The verdict
CanLII brings Canadian legal decisions, legislation, and commentary together with research and citation tools at no charge. Search+ requires registration and has a daily limit, and systematic document downloading is prohibited.
Who it suits
CanLII is suited to legal professionals and members of the public looking for Canadian decisions, legislation, or legal commentary. Researchers who want to save materials or use Search+ need a free myCanLII account.
Plans and prices
CanLII core access
Canadian case law, legislation and commentary · Free public access
Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
myCanLII Basic
Online legal research workspace · Free version listed · No trial listed
Read 15 Oct 2026 · capterra.com
CanLII
Free access to Canadian legal information; CanLII Search+ requires a free myCanLII account and is subject to a daily usage limit
Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
On the record
- AI privacy controls
- CanLII says AI content is labelled, source links are supplied where possible, and models are not allowed to train on processed materials.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- AI research
- CanLII Search+ accepts natural-language research questions and returns results from CanLII collections with contextual extracts and relevance indicators.canlii.org · read 3 Oct 2026
- AI subject classification
- Lexum’s Lexkey model assigned subjects to about 550,000 judicial decisions across Canada, with 44 possible subjects; Quebec judicial decisions were initially excluded.blog.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- API
- CanLII offers an authorized, read-only REST API that returns collection metadata as JSON and requires an API key requested through its feedback form.github.com · read 15 Oct 2026
- API limits
- The API documentation says case-browse requests support result batches up to 10,000 records and date filters for publication, modification and decision dates.github.com · read 15 Oct 2026
- Audience
- CanLII describes its resources as serving legal professionals and the general public.canlii.org · read 3 Oct 2026
- Bilingual interface
- The redesigned interface lets users keep English or French navigation while opening documents in the other official language.blog.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- Bulk-access restriction
- CanLII’s terms prohibit systematic downloading of documents, including through crawlers, plug-ins, extensions, bots or hired manual downloaders.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- CanLII Connects
- CanLII Connects is a companion site containing community-written case summaries and commentary linked to CanLII decisions.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- Case citation tools
- CanLII’s interface includes case history, treatment, cited-document and CanLII Connects tabs on primary-law pages.blog.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- Case law
- Its website provides judgments from Canadian courts and decisions from many federal and provincial administrative tribunals.canlii.org · read 3 Oct 2026
- Case-law coverage
- The service covers judgments from the Supreme Court of Canada, federal courts, every provincial and territorial court, and many administrative tribunals.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- Citation network
- CanLII’s citation-network project uses machine learning for conceptual search, navigation and improved ranking of authoritative documents.blog.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- Citation tool
- RefLex adds links to cited decisions and to Acts and regulations available on CanLII.canlii.org · read 3 Oct 2026
- Commentary
- Its Commentary collection includes secondary legal materials such as books, journals, articles and reports, while CanLII Connects hosts community case commentary and summaries.canlii.org · read 3 Oct 2026
- Commentary collection
- Its Commentary section contains law books, journals, articles, reports and other secondary materials.canlii.org · read 15 Oct 2026
- Company founded year
- LinkedIn lists CanLII as founded in 2001.ca.linkedin.com · read 15 Oct 2026
- Criticism: computational access
- An A2AJ research paper argues that CanLII’s restrictions on bulk and programmatic access impede computational-law and free-access-to-law work.arxiv.org · read 15 Oct 2026
