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CanLII

canlii.org

From C$8.33/mo Free plan WebAPI
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Spec score 9.1 #2 of 31 in Legal Research Software

What it is

CanLII is a nonprofit service offering free online access to Canadian judicial decisions and legislative documents. Its collections include court judgments, decisions from many federal and provincial administrative tribunals, consolidated statutes and regulations, and annual statutes across 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 CanLII. The Commentary collection includes secondary legal materials such as books, journals, articles and reports, while CanLII Connects hosts community case commentary and summaries. Registered myCanLII users can save and organize research in folders and set alerts. Search+ accepts natural-language research questions and returns results with contextual extracts and relevance indicators; it requires a free myCanLII account and has a daily usage limit. CanLII serves legal professionals and the general public. Its terms prohibit systematic downloading of published documents, including through crawlers, plug-ins, extensions and connectors. CanLII says personal information is kept in a secure computer environment with restricted access and that it strives to store it in Canada. Search+ queries and interactions are stored locally in the browser for history and are not retained in CanLII's systems.

Spec sheet

What it does
CanLII is a nonprofit online service providing open access to Canadian judicial decisions, legislation and secondary legal materials.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Purpose
CanLII is a nonprofit that provides open online access to judicial decisions and legislative documents.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Audience
CanLII describes its resources as serving legal professionals and the general public.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
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.Read 15 Oct 2026 · github.com
Founded
2001Read 28 Sep 2026 · canlii.org
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.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
AI research
CanLII Search+ accepts natural-language research questions and returns results from CanLII collections with contextual extracts and relevance indicators.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
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.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
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.Read 15 Oct 2026 · github.com
Bilingual interface
The redesigned interface lets users keep English or French navigation while opening documents in the other official language.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Bulk-access restriction
CanLII’s terms prohibit systematic downloading of documents, including through crawlers, plug-ins, extensions, bots or hired manual downloaders.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
CanLII Connects
CanLII Connects is a companion site containing community-written case summaries and commentary linked to CanLII decisions.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Case citation tools
CanLII’s interface includes case history, treatment, cited-document and CanLII Connects tabs on primary-law pages.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Case law
Its website provides judgments from Canadian courts and decisions from many federal and provincial administrative tribunals.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Case-law coverage
The service covers judgments from the Supreme Court of Canada, federal courts, every provincial and territorial court, and many administrative tribunals.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Citation network
CanLII’s citation-network project uses machine learning for conceptual search, navigation and improved ranking of authoritative documents.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Citation tool
RefLex adds links to cited decisions and to Acts and regulations available on CanLII.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Commentary
Its Commentary collection includes secondary legal materials such as books, journals, articles and reports, while CanLII Connects hosts community case commentary and summaries.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Commentary collection
Its Commentary section contains law books, journals, articles, reports and other secondary materials.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Company founded year
LinkedIn lists CanLII as founded in 2001.Read 15 Oct 2026 · ca.linkedin.com
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.Read 15 Oct 2026 · arxiv.org
Financing history
The same report says Canadian law societies participated in a collective $2 million loan in 2018 to finance CanLII’s purchase of Lexum support services.Read 15 Oct 2026 · lawsociety.bc.ca
Founder and mandate
The Federation of Law Societies of Canada created CanLII in 2001 to provide efficient online access to Canadian law.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Funding model
CanLII says it is financed by lawyers and notaries who belong to provincial and territorial law societies.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Integration
CanLII's privacy policy lists a Clio integration among data stored for myCanLII accounts.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Legislation
CanLII provides consolidated statutes and regulations, as well as annual statutes, for all Canadian jurisdictions.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Legislation coverage
CanLII provides consolidated statutes, regulations and annual statutes for all Canadian jurisdictions.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Legislation tools
Legislation pages provide tables of contents, regulations, amending legislation, citations and AI-analysis tabs.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Limit: API content scope
A Reddit commenter reported that the API exposes metadata rather than the full text of judgments.Read 15 Oct 2026 · reddit.com
Limit: bulk downloading
A Reddit user said CanLII blocked an account after many decisions were downloaded for a research project, and another commenter described CanLII as aggressive about preventing bulk downloads.Read 15 Oct 2026 · reddit.com
Limit: intermittent loading
A Reddit user reported that CanLII commentary articles intermittently displayed “null” instead of the article text while case-law research continued to work.Read 15 Oct 2026 · reddit.com
Limit: target fit
A Capterra reviewer said the product was easy to use but had little value for someone without much research to monitor.Read 15 Oct 2026 · capterra.com
LinkedIn company type
LinkedIn lists CanLII as a nonprofit legal-services organization with 2–10 employees.Read 15 Oct 2026 · ca.linkedin.com
LinkedIn headquarters
LinkedIn lists CanLII’s headquarters at 1700–340 Albert Street, Ottawa, Ontario.Read 15 Oct 2026 · ca.linkedin.com
myCanLII
A registered myCanLII account lets users save and organize research content, including folders and alerts.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
myCanLII storage
The free myCanLII account includes research folders, 5 GB of storage, 100 citation-alert feeds and six months of CanLII search history.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Notable 2026 event
CanLII announced that it would celebrate its 25th anniversary on October 14, 2026, at the LVI conference in Montreal.Read 15 Oct 2026 · ca.linkedin.com
Ownership
A Law Society of British Columbia financial report describes CanLII as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.Read 15 Oct 2026 · lawsociety.bc.ca
Permitted copying
Users may copy legal materials free of charge for legal research if they identify CanLII as the source, subject to source-specific conditions.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Praise: usability
A Capterra reviewer praised myCanLII’s layout, ease of use and ability to organize and monitor research.Read 15 Oct 2026 · capterra.com
Privacy and security
CanLII says personal information is kept in a secure computer environment with restricted access, and that it strives to store it in Canada.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Privacy disclosure
The privacy policy says personal information is not disclosed to third parties except where legally required or to service providers such as Lexum operating the site.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Privacy retention
CanLII says it keeps visit log data for 12 months and then securely disposes of it.Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Rating on Capterra
3.5 out of 5 from 2 reviewsRead 15 Oct 2026 · capterra.com
Search
The search interface supports full-text and title or citation searches, note-up searches, filters, facets and sorting.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Search+ access
CanLII says Search+ is available to anyone with a free myCanLII account, subject to a daily usage limit.Read 3 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Search+ account requirement
Search+ is available to users with a free myCanLII account and has a daily usage limit.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Search+ corpus restriction
Search+ searches only the CanLII document corpus and is described as being validated by legal experts.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Search+ data
CanLII says Search+ queries and interactions are stored locally in the browser for history and are not retained in its systems.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
Search+ launch
CanLII launched Search+ on 2026-02-25 as an AI research assistant that turns plain-language questions into structured searches.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Search+ relevance tools
Search+ analyzes context, extracts relevant passages and assigns relevance scores to results.Read 15 Oct 2026 · blog.canlii.org
Usage restriction
The terms prohibit systematic downloading of published documents, including by crawlers, plug-ins, extensions and connectors.Read 3 Oct 2026 · canlii.org

Plans and prices

CanLII Free 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
CanLII core access Free No subscription fee stated for public access Canadian case law, legislation and commentary · Free public access Read 15 Oct 2026 · canlii.org
myCanLII Basic C$100 a year CA$100.00 per year Online legal research workspace · Free version listed · No trial listed Read 15 Oct 2026 · capterra.com

Every CanLII plan and price →

Strong points and limits

Strong points

  • Free access to Canadian legal information.
  • Search covers decisions, statutes and regulations.
  • RefLex links cited decisions and legislation.
  • myCanLII supports folders and research alerts.
  • Search+ accepts natural-language research questions.

Limits

  • Search+ requires a myCanLII account and has a daily limit.
  • Systematic document downloading is prohibited.
  • The listed platform is web.

Who it suits

CanLII suits legal professionals and members of the public looking for Canadian decisions, legislation and legal commentary. Search+ is available to users with a free myCanLII account, subject to a daily usage limit.

Verdict

CanLII combines broad Canadian legal collections with multiple search modes, citation links and research organization. Search+ has an account and daily-use condition, and the terms restrict systematic downloading.

Where Specifiction places it

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