CanLII features

What is CanLII?

The Canadian Legal Information Institute, or CanLII, was created to enable free access to authoritative versions of Canadian case law and statutes on the Internet through a uniform search interface. CanLII is a non-profit corporation funded by all of the law societies across Canada, and is being developed and operated by the LexUM team at the Université de Montréal.

CanLII's goal is to publish a comprehensive collection of Canadian case law dating from January 2000, as well as earlier material made available by the courts. CanLII publishes statutes and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions. CanLII is also publishing rulings of some tribunals.

Scope of coverage

The databases on CanLII and their date range are listed in the Scope of Coverage link on the CanLII home page.

Search options

Home page search

The CanLII home page contains a search box that allows full text key word searches (line 1) and also allows searches by name or citation (line 2).

Terms are searched as though AND were inserted between them.
Boolean and proximity connectors can be used if desired. Information on search syntax is available by clicking on HELP in the search box.
Use quotation marks for phrase searching.
Plural forms of your terms and basic word variants will be searched automatically.

For a summary of CanLII search syntax as compared to other research tools, see Search Syntax for Canadian Legal Databases and Search Syntax for Internet Legal Sites.

Tip: The AND, OR and NOT connectors must be capitalized in CanLII search queries.

The home page search is run on all of the content in the CanLII collection unless you de-select collection types or restrict the date range.

Jurisdiction search

You can restrict your search by jurisdiction, by clicking on the name of a jurisdiction from the list on the left of the home page. From there, you can search all databases for that jurisdiction or restrict your search to individual databases within that jurisdiction.

The page for each jurisdiction contains external links for legal information relevant to that jurisdiction. The page for individual courts displays lists of recently added cases as well as links to practice directions and rules of court.

Advanced search

The Advanced Search template appears when you click on Advanced Search at the bottom left of the home page.

In addition to the search features described above, the Advanced search template allows you more choices regarding search parameters.

Customize which jurisdictions are searched.
For administrative tribunals, select the type of tribunal to be searched.
For court cases, restrict your search to appellate decisions.

Database search

The Database Search template appears when you click on Database Search at the bottom left of the home page. It allows you to select in which databases you want to search.

Tip: If you want to restrict your search to the courts from your jurisdiction and the Supreme Court of Canada, the Database Search is the way to do it.

Search results

Ranking

The search results are ranked by relevance, but can be re-sorted by date or by citation frequency. Cases are listed with computer-generated keywords to assist in quickly determining their relevance.

Refining

The search results page allows you to refine your search by:

modifying the query
restricting your search by date, jurisdiction, court level or type of collection.

Viewing

When viewing a document, the highlight tool allows you to specify which terms you want to locate. Cases can be viewed and printed in HTML or PDF format. Neutral citations and parallel citations are included to allow proper citation to reported cases.

Legislation

Browsing

Statutes collections include tables listing statutes by name with links to associated regulations. Earlier versions of the legislation are included and can be searched if desired.

The currency of each legislation collection depends on the frequency with which the government updates its own consolidation.

Searching

Searches can be carried out:

across all legislation collections on CanLII
within all legislation for an individual jurisdiction
within an individual statute or regulation.

Tip: To search within an individual statute or regulation, enter the name of the statute or regulation on Line 2 of the search box, and the keywords on Line 1.

View and compare

When a statute is viewed:

the box at the top of the screen lists the different versions on CanLII
select two versions and click on COMPARE to view the versions in a side-by-side comparison with the changes highlighted
the box will not appear when the statute is printed
the box also links to regulations enacted pursuant to the statute, and to note-up results for the legislation.

The note-up results are not comprehensive.

Links and noting up

The RefLex database of case and legislation citations on CanLII enables creation of links between documents, generation of note-up results, and the addition of parallel citations to cases.

Tip: RefLex results showing cases that have judicially considered a particular case can be refined further using the search box that appears at the top of the results list.

The Noteup feature is dependent on hyperlinks, and only lists documents for which hyperlinks have been added. For its scope, see the information on RefLex on the CanLII site.

Linking your documents to CanLII content

CanLEX allows you to hyperlink your documents to the cases and legislation on CanLII. Go to CanLEX.org, and select the document on your computer to which you want the links added. Specify your preferences and click the RefLex button. CanLEX will automatically add links to your document for all cases, tribunal decisions, and legislation on CanLII that are indexed in the RefLex database.