Long-form research on Australian legal-research tooling.
Working notes from the CaseSharp team in Sydney. The graduation cliff, the AGLC4 rulebook, paragraph-level treatment as a methodological choice, and how to think about AI in Australian legal research. Written for practitioners and student researchers who want the full argument.
- Strategy15 April 2026 · 8 min read
The graduation cliff
Roughly 7,500 Australian law students graduate each year. The day they do, their institutional research-database access ends. What replaces it, for most of them, is materially worse than what they had. The cliff is documented, predictable, and the single largest involuntary downgrade in the Australian legal profession. CaseSharp was built around it.
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- Practical15 April 2026 · 11 min read
AGLC4 mistakes that cost marks (and how to avoid them)
The Australian Guide to Legal Citation, fourth edition, is a 320-page rulebook for how to format references in legal writing. Most students lose marks on the same six things. A field guide to the small punctuation, italics, and pinpoint conventions that actually matter.
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- Methodology15 April 2026 · 9 min read
Paragraph-level treatment, explained
Most legal-research tools treat citations at the case level: this case cited that case. CaseSharp treats them at the paragraph level: this case cited paragraph 580 of that case, and applied it. The difference matters in litigation, in academia, and in any setting where the question is not 'has anyone cited this' but 'has anyone followed the bit I am relying on'.
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