CanLII, WorldLII and Free Legal Information on the Web

CanLII,  http://canlii.org   the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has been one of the most significant developments in Canadian legal information in the past five years. Introduced in 2001, CanLII now provides free searchable access to more than 100 files of federal and provincial statutes, regulations, court and tribunal decisions.  Researchers can search on individual files listed on the home page, click on a jurisdiction to search its files, or use the Advanced Search to select files, e.g. Appellate High Courts.

CanLII uses a permanent URL for each document/decision. This URL is therefore ideal to use in course materials and web sites to link to full text decisions.   Readers will not have to sign in to any proprietary online system with a password.  CanLII uses the Neutral Citation Standard for judgments, but also provides parallel citations to print reports, and its Reflex feature provides print citations to cases not available in CanLII.

In addition, CanLII’s Noteup feature provides updating information for cases and statutes.

Although statues and regulations are included in CanLII, in most cases it is preferable to rely on provincial sites such as Ontario’s eLaws, which are usually more complete and up-to-date.

CanLII, created by LexUM at the University of Motreal and funded by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, belongs to the Free Access to Law Movement which promotes free public access to law through the collaborating Legal Information Institutes.  The umbrella site is WorldLII  http://www.worldlii.org  which includes 675 databases from 86 countries and 21 international databases.  In addition to CanLII, the other regional and national LIIs include:

CommonLII  -  more than 50 Commonwealth jurisdictions, territories and dependencies

PacLII  - 20 Pacific islands jurisdictions

Droit francophone

Austlii (Australia)

BAILII (UK and Ireland)

CyLaw (Cyprus)

HKLII (Hong Kong)

Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica

JuriBurkina

Legal Information Institute  (USA, Cornell)

NZLII (New Zealand)

SAFLII (South Africa)

Most LII sites also include a Catalog or Related Links section which link to web sites of other legal organizations such as law reform bodies, law journals, etc.