CanLII recently announced the addition of AI generated subject classification to its Ontario and Saskatchewan case law which makes it much faster to see what area of the law a case falls into.

If you’re searching case law from either of these jurisdictions you can limit your search to specific subjects; for example, if I only wanted to see cases in Ontario dealing with contract law, I would click on the All subjects dropdown menu and then select Contracts.

Note that the All subjects dropdown menu only appears if you are looking at either Ontario or Saskatchewan case law …

Lexbox is a free* online service that allows you to set up CanLII alerts that are automatically emailed to you.

To set up an alert on CanLII using Lexbox:

• If you haven’t already done so, create a Lexbox account.
• Go to CanLII and run your search.
• Once you are happy with the search, click on the grey Set up alert feed button. If you’re not already logged in, it will prompt you to do so.
• A box with the details of your alert should pop up. You can rename your search and choose how often you wish to

One of CANLII’s lesser known resources is its Foreign reported decisions database which “includes some decisions issued by foreign courts and tribunals and that are of special interest for Canadian law.”

For example, should you be interested in Browne v. Dunn (1893), 6 R. 67 (a decision sufficiently challenging to find online that someone created a dedicated website for it) you can find it on CanLII.

While the collection of foreign decisions is not large, CanLII will on request add cases that are of interest to Canadian legal practitioners.

(And for all your regular British case law needs, there is …

Last Thursday, CanLII unveiled its newest endeavour: the CanLII Manual to British Columbia Civil Litigation. The resource consists of nine “pathfinders” dealing with specific areas of the law, a guide to civil procedure at the BC Supreme Court, and annotated rules of court for both the BC Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.

There is a lot of very useful information in this publication but there was one particular resource I wanted to highlight: the annotated rules of court. Lawyers frequently want to consult an annotated rules but up until now there has been nothing available freely online …

One question that comes up on a regular basis is “why can’t I find a copy of this act on CanLII?” 

One possibility is that the act is an annual statute that only amends another act (or acts), e.g. the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2018, S.B.C. 2018, c. 48. Not all amendment acts appear on CanLII; it depends on the jurisdiction.

If you’re not having any luck finding an act on CanLII, and its citation does not begin with “R.S.” (for Revised Statutes), you will probably want to look at the annual statutes for that jurisdiction on …

For anyone looking a good guide to legal research, Catherine Best’s “Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research” has been updated by a team of legal research experts (Melanie Bueckert, André Clair, Maryvon Côté, Yasmin Khan and Mandy Ostick) and added to CanLII’s commentary section.

The revised Canadian Legal Research and Writing Guide is divided up into 13 sections (including “Step-By-Step Legal Research Process”, “Use Commentary to Define and Understand the Issues”, “Guidelines for Online Research”, “Researching Canadian Federal and Provincial Legislation”, “Searching Canadian Case Law”, “Stare Decisis and Techniques of Legal Reasoning and Legal Argument”, “Preparing a Legal Memorandum”, and …

As mentioned earlier this year, CanLII has been adding secondary materials to its database. If you’re looking for recent articles from Canadian law journals, CanLII now offers access to sixteen journals:

• Alberta Law Review
• Appeal: Review of Current Law and Law Reform
• Canadian Bar Review
• Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law
• Canadian Journal of Human Rights
• Canadian Law Library Review
• Canadian Parliamentary Review
• Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies
• LawNow Magazine
• Manitoba Law Journal
• McGill Journal of Dispute Resolution
• McGill Journal of Law and Health
• McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law
• Ottawa Law Review
• University of New Brunswick

The following is based on a post made by John Sadler of Western University on the CALL listserv.

CanLII does not offer a custom field that permits searching by counsel.  However, there is a technique for finding cases in which a particular lawyer appeared for one of the parties. It relies on the fact that most cases follow a uniform syntax when identifying counsel. For example in a case in which Ms June L. Carter was counsel, the reasons for judgment will say something like the following at the beginning:

               June L. Carter, for the respondent

To search for Ms. …