For Australian law students
CaseSharp and AustLII
AustLII is free, it is where the judgments actually are, and every Australian law school teaches it for good reason. This page is not an argument for dropping it. It is the honest answer to a narrower question: what does CaseSharp do that AustLII was never built to do, and is that worth anything to you in week 8.
Last updated 3 August 2026. Written by the CaseSharp team in Sydney.
Short answer
Use AustLII when you know exactly which case you want. Use CaseSharp when you do not, or when you need it briefed and cited by Thursday. AustLII gives you documents. CaseSharp gives you a plain English way in, a structured brief, AGLC4 footnotes, and a citation graph you can read while you go rather than as a separate lookup.
What AustLII is very good at
AustLII is the Australasian Legal Information Institute, a free-access service run as a public good and supported by donations. It publishes the full text of Australian judgments, legislation, law-reform reports and treaties, plus a wide slice of Pacific material. On the open web an AustLII URL is usually the citation of record. The LawCite citator lists what has cited a judgment and what that judgment cited. Search runs over the full text, with court and date filters.
None of that is a criticism. AustLII was designed to be the document layer for Australian law, it does that better than anything else, and for deep historical work or anything outside the CaseSharp corpus it is the tool. Learn to use it properly. It will still be there after you graduate, which is more than can be said for your university logins.
What CaseSharp adds
CaseSharp is built around four jobs that come up in a law degree rather than around the archive. Ask a question the way you would ask a tutor and Sharp answers in plain English, with every claim pinned to the paragraph of the judgment it came from. Every authority page carries a citation graph, the cases that cite it and the cases it cites ranked by influence, so the later cases you need to read sit next to the case name instead of at the end of a separate citator list. Any judgment becomes an IRAC brief with material facts, issue, rule, application and what was held, each part linked back to its paragraph. And AGLC4 comes out in full form and short form with pinpoints, flagged for manual review when a reference cannot be parsed, because a confident wrong citation is worse than no citation.
When the corpus does not support an answer, Sharp says so and shows you what it did find rather than inventing a case to fill the gap. Every substantive output carries a human-review notice. You still read the judgment. What you stop doing is spending forty minutes working out where in it to start.
Side by side
| The job | CaseSharp | AustLII |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs you | A free plan that does not expire and does not need a card, with 3 Sharp questions and 1 IRAC brief in total. A$49 a month if you want it every day | Free, a public good, supported by donations |
| Asking a question in plain English | Ask the way you would ask a tutor and get an answer with the authorities attached | Designed as a document database, so you search for words that appear in judgments |
| Seeing what has cited a case | A citation graph sits on every authority page: the cases that cite it and the cases it cites, ranked by influence, each one linked | The LawCite list shows what has cited what, and ranking and reading the later cases is your job |
| Opening the paragraph a claim came from | Every citation links to the paragraph the later court relied on | Links open the cited judgment, and you scroll to the paragraph yourself |
| Briefing a case for a tutorial | An IRAC brief with material facts, issue, rule, application and what was held, each part linked to its paragraph | You read the judgment and write the brief |
| AGLC4 footnotes | Full form and short form with pinpoints, flagged for manual review when a reference cannot be parsed | Citation strings are on the page, and getting them into AGLC4 punctuation is your job |
| Keeping your work | Saved authorities, notes, folders, authority packets and Sharp threads stay in your account | Read-only, no account, nothing saved between visits |
| Sharing a set of cases with a study group | An authority packet shares as a single link | You send citations or document links |
| Coverage | 73,000 audited Australian decisions, current to the end of April 2026 | The comprehensive Australian and Pacific archive, including a great deal of material outside the CaseSharp corpus |
| Where it runs | Hosted on Australian infrastructure | Hosted in Australia |
Where each one is strongest
Where AustLII is still better
- The comprehensive Australian and Pacific archive
- Judgments handed down since the CaseSharp coverage date
- Older tribunal material outside the CaseSharp corpus
- Stable public URLs you can put in a footnote
- Reading a judgment end to end with nothing in the way
Where CaseSharp helps
- Working out which authority you actually need
- Seeing the citation graph while you read, not as a second lookup
- Briefing a case in IRAC before a tutorial
- AGLC4 full form and short form with pinpoints
- Checking the citing cases behind an exam scaffold
- Keeping notes, packets and saved searches in one account
Questions students ask about this
- Should I stop using AustLII?
- No, and nobody should talk you out of it. AustLII is free, it is comprehensive, and for a lot of research it is the fastest way to the document. It is also the archive that holds material the CaseSharp corpus does not, including older tribunal and Pacific decisions. Use AustLII when you know exactly which case you want. Use CaseSharp when you do not, or when you need it briefed and cited by Thursday.
- Is AustLII still free?
- Yes. AustLII is a free, donation-supported service run for public benefit, and CaseSharp does not change that. CaseSharp has a free plan of its own that does not expire and does not ask for a card, with 3 Sharp questions and 1 IRAC brief in total, plus full search and reading with pinpoint links.
- Why would I pay for something when AustLII is free?
- Because they answer different questions. AustLII is excellent at finding a case once you know what you are looking for. CaseSharp helps with the harder one: which later courts have cited the case you are about to rely on, which of them carry the most weight, and where the paragraph you need sits, so you can open those later cases and see for yourself whether the reasoning still holds. If that is not a question you have at 11pm, the free plan is enough.
- How current is CaseSharp compared with AustLII?
- The CaseSharp corpus is current to the end of April 2026. Judgments handed down after that date are not in it yet, so for anything very recent, check AustLII or your library database as well. We publish the coverage date in the footer of every page and update it when the corpus is extended.
- Can I use both in the same piece of work?
- That is the point. Most students start in CaseSharp to work out which authorities matter and how they have been treated, then open AustLII to read the judgment end to end or to chase something outside the corpus. Neither tool is trying to be the other one.