Honest comparison
CaseSharp vs AustLII
AustLII is a public good. For three decades it has given every Australian researcher free access to the full text of Australian and Pacific case law, legislation, and law-reform commentary. CaseSharp is not a replacement. It is a different surface on top of curated Australian case law, tuned for the daily research workflow, with treatment classification, paragraph-level pinpoint, and a grounded AI assistant. This page is the honest answer to the question, when is each one the right fit?
Last updated 6 May 2026. Written by the CaseSharp team in Sydney.
Short answer
AustLII is the right fit when you need the comprehensive historical archive, the citation of record, or research material outside the curated CaseSharp corpus. CaseSharp is the right fit for the daily question, is the case I want to cite still good law in 2026? Use both. AustLII for the canonical full text and the deep archive, CaseSharp for treatment surfacing, hybrid retrieval, AGLC4, and the AI research surface that refuses to fabricate.
What AustLII gives you
AustLII is the Australasian Legal Information Institute, a free-access research service operated as a public good and donation supported. It publishes the full text of Australian judgments, legislation, law-reform reports, treaties, and a wide slice of Pacific material. For most researchers, an AustLII URL is the citation of record on the open web. The LawCite citator lists inbound and outbound references for every judgment. Search is keyword-based across the full text, with court and date filters. There is no account, no saved state, and no AI assistant. The product is the database itself, and that is the point.
For deep historical research, for citation verification, and for material outside the CaseSharp curated corpus, AustLII is irreplaceable. Every Australian researcher should know how to use it well.
What CaseSharp delivers
CaseSharp is built around the daily Australian case-research workflow rather than the full historical archive. The corpus is curated, indexed, and reranked for legal-research relevance, not keyword recall. Hybrid retrieval combines BM25 keyword matching with dense semantic embeddings and a treatment-aware reranker so the strongest authority on the question lands at the top, not the most lexically similar. Every authority page shows a treatment badge at the top, followed, applied, distinguished, cautioned, neutral, or overruled, so the answer to is this still good law sits next to the case name rather than buried in a citator list. Every citation pill links to the exact paragraph of the cited authority, not just the top of the document.
Sharp, the AI research assistant, is on every authority page. Every claim is cited to a paragraph of the verified judgment text. If the source does not support the claim, Sharp returns the exact phrase Authority not verified and declines, rather than inventing a citation. Saved authorities, search history, and Sharp threads persist to your account. AGLC4 citations are generated automatically and exportable to Word. Authority packets let you assemble a curated bundle of cases and share it with a single link.
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | CaseSharp | AustLII |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to the researcher | Free tier with three Sharp chats and one brief lifetime, paid tier for daily use | Free, public good, donation supported |
| Search method | Hybrid retrieval, BM25 keyword plus dense semantic plus reranker, treatment-aware ranking | Keyword search across the full text, no semantic ranking |
| Treatment classification on every authority | Visible badge at the top of every authority page, followed, applied, distinguished, neutral, cautioned, or overruled | Raw inbound and outbound citations in the LawCite list, treatment is left to the reader |
| Paragraph-level pinpoint linking | Yes, every citation anchored to the exact paragraph the later court relied on | Links jump to the top of the cited document, the reader scrolls to the paragraph |
| AI research assistant grounded in the judgment text | Yes, Sharp is on every authority page, every claim cited to a paragraph, refuses if the source does not support the claim | Not offered, AustLII is a database, not an assistant |
| AGLC4 citation generator | Yes, one-click copy and Word export for every case and statute | Citation strings present, AGLC4 punctuation is the reader's responsibility |
| Persistent saved authorities and research history | Yes, saved authorities, search history, and Sharp threads are persisted to your account | Read-only, no account, no saved state |
| Shareable authority packets | Yes, single-link share of a curated bundle of authorities | Not offered, share by copying citation strings or document URLs |
| Legislation mapped to interpreting cases | Yes, section by section, with treatment on each case in the chain | Acts published in full, the reader stitches together the interpreting cases |
| Coverage scope | Curated Australian case-law corpus tuned for daily research, not the full historical archive | Comprehensive Australian and Pacific historical archive, the reference public dataset |
| Australian data residency | Yes, all infrastructure in Australia | Yes, hosted in Australia |
Where each one is strongest
AustLII strongest at
- Comprehensive historical archive of Australian and Pacific authorities
- Citation of record on the open web, stable URLs, full text
- Material outside the curated CaseSharp corpus
- Reading the unedited judgment from end to end
CaseSharp strongest at
- Treatment classification visible on every authority page
- Hybrid retrieval, semantic plus keyword, reranked for relevance
- Paragraph-level pinpoint linking on every citation
- Sharp, a grounded AI assistant that refuses to fabricate
- Persistent saved authorities and Sharp threads
- AGLC4 citation, one-click copy, Word export
When each one is the right fit
- AustLII is the right fit when
- You need the canonical full text of a judgment for citation of record. You are doing deep historical research outside the curated CaseSharp corpus. You want the unedited document end to end without an assistant in the page. You are an academic or law-reform researcher who needs the comprehensive archive of Australian and Pacific authorities, including older tribunal and Pacific material that a tuned product corpus may not include.
- CaseSharp is the right fit when
- You are checking whether the case you want to cite is still good law and you want the answer at the top of the page, not at the end of a citator list. You want hybrid retrieval so the strongest authority on the question ranks first, not the most lexically similar. You want paragraph-level pinpoint so the citation lands where the later court actually relied on the reasoning. You want a grounded AI assistant that cites every claim to a paragraph and refuses when the source does not support the claim. You want saved authorities, AGLC4 citation, and shareable research packets.
- Use both when
- You start in CaseSharp to triage treatment, narrow the authority list, and draft a research note with paragraph-level pinpoints. You finish in AustLII to verify the citation of record, read the full unedited judgment, or chase a thread outside the curated corpus. Each tool is doing the job it is strongest at, and the workflow is faster than either tool alone.
Frequently asked
- Does CaseSharp replace AustLII?
- No. AustLII is a public good and a comprehensive historical archive. CaseSharp is a tuned research surface on top of curated Australian case law, with treatment surfacing, paragraph-level pinpoint, and a grounded AI assistant. Many researchers use both, AustLII for the deep archive and citation-of-record verification, CaseSharp for the daily workflow.
- Is AustLII still free?
- Yes. AustLII is a free, donation-supported research service operated for public benefit. CaseSharp does not change that. CaseSharp ships a free tier of three Sharp chats and one brief lifetime, with a paid tier for daily use.
- Why use CaseSharp if AustLII is free?
- Time. AustLII is excellent at finding a case once you know what you are looking for. CaseSharp answers the harder question, has any later court limited, distinguished, or overruled the reasoning you are about to rely on, and shows the answer at the top of every authority page rather than buried in a citator list. Hybrid retrieval, paragraph-level pinpoint, AGLC4 generation, and a grounded assistant are small time savings per query that compound across a research day.
- Does CaseSharp scrape AustLII?
- No. CaseSharp builds its corpus from primary public sources and stays inside the access terms of those sources. We are happy to discuss our sourcing in detail with research and library teams on request.