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Coverage

What CaseSharp holds, and what it doesn't

CaseSharp checks your citations against the court records we hold. They are not complete, and what we hold differs by court and by year. Here is what we hold, the leading cases we know are missing, and why we send you to the source to read a judgment.

Last reviewed 13 October 2026. Next review by 13 November 2026, or sooner when our records change.

Not in our recordsmeans we couldn't find the case in our records, not that your citation is wrong.

How we count

Every figure on this page is read from our records, court by court, and none is typed by hand. “Covered to” is the date of the third most recent judgment we hold for a court, so one wrongly dated record cannot move it. It is not a promise that everything before it is there. How we measured this

Coverage by court

How recent our records are, how many judgments we hold and how many each year, for the courts and tribunals law students cite. Find yours, then check the year you need.

Loading coverage, court by court.

Leading cases we don't hold yet

26 cases a law student is commonly taught that we did not hold on 13 October 2026, checked by citation and by name. They are High Court of Australia decisions unless another court is named. The list is our own judgement of what is commonly taught, not any school's reading list.

If you cite one, the check says Not in our records

Each name opens a search for the case on AustLII, in a new tab.

Known problems we are fixing

  1. Search does not always find a case we hold

    On 13 October 2026 a search for “Donoghue v Stevenson” returned no result, although the judgment is held, and a search for “Lange” returned other cases instead of Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is also held.

    Until then: If a case you expect is missing, search by its citation as well as its name.

  2. Some report citations can point to the wrong case

    Some Commonwealth Law Reports (CLR) citations we tested matched a different case from the one the citation belongs to. We are fixing this.

    Until then: After any match, open the record and check the case name, court and year before you rely on it.

Full text: what we show, and why

CaseSharp does not show the text of judgments or legislation. It shows the details of each case we hold and links you to read the judgment where it is published.

What CaseSharp shows, and where to read the rest
WhatOn CaseSharpWhere to read it
Case details: name, citation, court, date and judgesShownOn CaseSharp, for the cases we hold
The text of a judgmentNot shownOn the court’s own site where we can link to it, on AustLII or on JADE
Paragraphs, PDFs and downloads of a judgmentNot shownThe same links, from the case page and from each check result
The text of legislationNot shownThe Federal Register of Legislation for Commonwealth Acts, or AustLII

Why we don't show it

Each court and official publisher sets its own terms for reusing its judgments. Before we show the text of a judgment, we need a copy from that court or publisher and a record of where the copy came from. That record holds:

  • the court or official publisher it came from, and the web address
  • when we fetched it
  • a fingerprint of the file, so any later change shows
  • the publisher’s reuse terms, and the date we read them

The copies we hold today do not have that record, so we don't show their text. Only a copy with that record can have its text shown on CaseSharp.

Records cleared to show full text

None yet

As of 13 October 2026

We plan to start with publishers whose reuse terms are published: Commonwealth legislation from the Federal Register of Legislation, then NSW Caselaw, then the High Court's judgments from 1998.

The check doesn't need the text

The citation check matches the facts of each citation, such as the case name, year, report and court, against our record of the case. To read the paragraph you cite, follow the link from the result to the court's site, AustLII or JADE, and confirm it yourself.

What we hold, and what we don't

We hold

  • Decisions of Australian courts and tribunals, with gaps that differ by court and by year.
  • Some Australian legislation.
  • Hearing transcripts for many High Court cases. A transcript is not the judgment.
  • Some United Kingdom and New Zealand decisions.

We are not a source for

  • Journal articles, textbooks and other commentary.
  • Authorised report series as published, including their headnotes and editorial material.
  • A complete set of decisions for any court.
  • Foreign law, apart from some United Kingdom and New Zealand decisions that appear incidentally.

Writing a thesis

If you are writing a thesis or a long research paper, CaseSharp can check the Australian case citations in one chapter at a time, up to 200,000 characters. It does not check secondary sources, legislation pinpoints or a whole thesis at once, and it is not a citator.

If a case isn't in our records

Try these, in order, before you change a citation. A case we don't hold can still exist.

  1. Search by citation and by name

    Our search can miss a case we hold, so try both before you move on.

  2. Ask your law library

    Your law library can usually give you databases that carry the authorised reports. What your law school gives you

How we measured this

Computed figures are read from the records themselves, court by court, counting each judgment in the court’s own neutral citation series (such as [2024] HCA 12) once. “Covered to” is the date of the third most recent judgment we hold in that court’s citation series, so one wrongly dated record cannot move it. It is the newest edge of what we hold, not a promise that everything before it is there. The High Court numbers each year’s judgments from 1, so the highest number we hold is the least it gave that year.

The sample figures come from our own probe of CaseSharp’s public search on 13 October 2026, which looked up citations and leading cases one at a time: judgment number 1 of six years in 22 courts, the High Court’s judgments 1 to 30 for 2023 to 2026, and 58 leading cases. They are a sample, not a census.

We review this page every month, and whenever our records change. Last reviewed 13 October 2026.

Tell us about a case we don't hold

Check 3 drafts a month, free.

Your citations against our records, with links to read each case. No card, and no generative AI.