Is Jade really free for law students?

Yes. Jade has a free registered tier available to anyone, and JADE Professional is available free to law students with a university email address. Arrangements vary between institutions, so check what your library lists, but the honest answer to the question a student is actually asking is that Jade costs them nothing. Any page that implies otherwise is not worth reading.

So why would I use CaseSharp as well?

Because they answer different questions. Jade is excellent at finding a case and reading how later courts have treated it. CaseSharp is built for what a law degree grades: getting a plain-English way into an area you do not know yet, turning a judgment into an IRAC brief before a tutorial, producing AGLC4 footnotes with pinpoints, and checking a whole exam scaffold at once. Most students who use CaseSharp keep using Jade too, and that is a sensible thing to do.

Which one should I use to check if a case has been overruled?

For that exact question, Jade. Its citator classifies treatment at the level of the passage: it will tell you a case has been followed, distinguished or overruled, which is the verdict you want when you are checking one authority in depth. CaseSharp does not do that. It puts the citation graph at the top of the authority page, the cases that cite it ranked by influence, each one named and linked, which is faster when you are checking twenty cases on a scaffold rather than one in depth. What it gives you is the citing cases to read, not a verdict on whether the case is still good law, so read the later cases before you rely on either tool.

Do I lose Jade access when I graduate?

The student arrangement for JADE Professional is tied to a university email address, so like every institutional login it depends on that address continuing to work. The free registered tier is not tied to a university and stays. A CaseSharp account belongs to you rather than to your institution: everything you saved stays and the free plan does not expire.

How current is CaseSharp compared with Jade?

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 Jade, 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.

For Australian law students

CaseSharp and Jade

Start with the fact that matters most: Jade is free to you. It has a free registered tier, JADE Professional is available free to law students with a university email address, and it is genuinely very good at what it was built for. Here is the honest difference. Jade is a practitioner-grade citator, built for looking the law up. CaseSharp is built for learning it, and unlike a JADE Professional login, which reaches you through your university email, a CaseSharp account stays yours after you graduate.

Published 4 August 2026. Written by the CaseSharp team in Sydney.

Short answer

Jade is a fast, well-liked lookup and citator, and for a law student it is free. Keep using it. But Jade assumes you already think like a lawyer: it takes you to authority and to how later courts have treated it, and leaves the sense-making to you. A degree grades three things Jade leaves to you, understanding an area you do not know yet in plain English, structuring it in IRAC, and citing it in AGLC4 with pinpoints, and that is what CaseSharp is built to do. JADE Professional access is tied to your university email; a CaseSharp account, and everything in it, stays yours.

What Jade is built for

Jade is an Australian case law service with a large collection and a citator, and among the people who use it every day it is very well liked. If you already know the case you want, it takes you straight there. Its citator is the part practitioners rely on: it tracks, passage by passage, how later courts have treated a case, whether a passage has been followed, distinguished or overruled, so you can judge whether it is still safe to cite. On that specific job, telling you how a case has been treated, Jade is ahead of CaseSharp, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.

None of that is a criticism. Jade was designed to find authority and read its treatment, and it does that job well. Learn it properly. The free registered tier is open to anyone, and JADE Professional is free to you while you are a student, so there is every reason to.

The three things a degree grades

Jade is built for practitioners, who already know how to turn a judgment into an argument. It hands you the authority and its history and leaves the reasoning to you. A law degree is where you are still learning that reasoning, and it grades three things Jade leaves entirely in your hands.

First, the answer arrives ready to work with. Ask CaseSharp a problem question in plain English and it answers with the authorities attached, each one linked to the paragraph it came from, rather than a set of judgments and citator results to read and synthesise yourself. That is the difference between being handed the sources and being handed a structured answer you can check.

Second, it structures what you find. Give CaseSharp a judgment and it returns an IRAC brief, material facts, issue, rule, application and what was held, each part linked back to its paragraph, so you still read the case but you stop hunting for where it starts.

Third, it cites in AGLC4. Paste a case or a section and CaseSharp returns the full form and the short form with pinpoints, and flags a reference for manual review rather than guessing, because a confident wrong citation is worse than none. Jade shows you the citation details on the page. Getting them into AGLC4 punctuation is your job.

The graduation cliff

JADE Professional reaches you through your university email, so like every institutional login it depends on that university access continuing to work. The free registered tier stays open to anyone. It is the deeper student tier that is tied to the email.

A CaseSharp account belongs to you, not to your university. Everything you saved stays, the free plan does not expire, and you keep the price you were paying as a student. The work you build across a degree does not have to end on the day the degree does.

Side by side

The job	CaseSharp	Jade
What it costs a law student	A free plan that does not expire and does not need a card, with 3 Sharp questions and 1 IRAC brief in total, plus full search and reading	Free. There is a free registered tier, and JADE Professional is available free to law students with a university email address
Going to a case you already know the name of	Search by name or citation and open the judgment	Fast, direct and well-liked. This is what it was built for
Starting from a problem, before you know the case	Ask in plain English the way you would ask a tutor, and get an answer with the authorities attached, each one linked to its paragraph	Returns judgments and citator results for you to read and synthesise yourself, rather than an answer with each authority pinned to its paragraph
Understanding an area you have not met yet	A plain-English answer that pins every claim to the paragraph of the judgment it came from	Gives you the judgments to read and leaves the sense-making to you, which is what its practitioner users prefer
Structuring it into IRAC	An IRAC brief with material facts, issue, rule, application and what was held, each part linked back to its paragraph	You read the judgment and write the brief
Citing it in AGLC4	Full form and short form with pinpoints, flagged for manual review when a reference cannot be parsed	Citation details are on the page, and getting them into AGLC4 punctuation is your job
Checking whether a case is still good law	Shows the citing cases ranked by influence for you to read. It does not classify treatment or hand you a verdict	Its citator classifies treatment passage by passage, whether a case has been followed, distinguished or overruled. On this job it is ahead
Checking a whole scaffold at once	A citation graph on every authority turns twenty separate lookups into one pass through a ranked list	Built to read one citation history in depth, one case at a time
When you graduate	Your account is yours: everything you saved stays, the free plan does not expire, and you keep your student price	The free registered tier stays. JADE Professional reaches you through your university email, so that deeper access ends when your enrolment does
Coverage	73,000 audited Australian decisions, current to the end of April 2026	A large Australian collection, including material outside the CaseSharp corpus and judgments handed down since the coverage date

Where Jade is still ahead

It is free to you, which is hard to argue with
Going straight to a case you already know the name of
Telling you how a case has been treated, passage by passage: followed, distinguished or overruled
Reading one citation history in depth
Material outside the CaseSharp corpus, and judgments since the coverage date
Working the way a practising lawyer works

Where CaseSharp is built for a degree

Starting from a plain-English problem before you know which case you need
Understanding an area you have not met yet, in plain English
Structuring it in IRAC, each part linked to its paragraph
Citing it in AGLC4, full form and short form with pinpoints
Checking a whole scaffold of cases at once, not one at a time
Study modes: timed questions, IRAC drill, closed book
An account that stays yours after you graduate

Questions students ask about this

Is Jade really free for law students?: Yes. Jade has a free registered tier available to anyone, and JADE Professional is available free to law students with a university email address. Arrangements vary between institutions, so check what your library lists, but the honest answer to the question a student is actually asking is that Jade costs them nothing. Any page that implies otherwise is not worth reading.
So why would I use CaseSharp as well?: Because they answer different questions. Jade is excellent at finding a case and reading how later courts have treated it. CaseSharp is built for what a law degree grades: getting a plain-English way into an area you do not know yet, turning a judgment into an IRAC brief before a tutorial, producing AGLC4 footnotes with pinpoints, and checking a whole exam scaffold at once. Most students who use CaseSharp keep using Jade too, and that is a sensible thing to do.
Which one should I use to check if a case has been overruled?: For that exact question, Jade. Its citator classifies treatment at the level of the passage: it will tell you a case has been followed, distinguished or overruled, which is the verdict you want when you are checking one authority in depth. CaseSharp does not do that. It puts the citation graph at the top of the authority page, the cases that cite it ranked by influence, each one named and linked, which is faster when you are checking twenty cases on a scaffold rather than one in depth. What it gives you is the citing cases to read, not a verdict on whether the case is still good law, so read the later cases before you rely on either tool.
Do I lose Jade access when I graduate?: The student arrangement for JADE Professional is tied to a university email address, so like every institutional login it depends on that address continuing to work. The free registered tier is not tied to a university and stays. A CaseSharp account belongs to you rather than to your institution: everything you saved stays and the free plan does not expire.
How current is CaseSharp compared with Jade?: 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 Jade, 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.

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Also worth reading: CaseSharp and AustLII, CaseSharp and Lexis+ AU