CaseSharp for UNSW law students

How the degree is structured

• ·School leavers enter a double degree, five years, for example BCom and LLB or BA and LLB. Law is not offered as a stand-alone undergraduate degree.
• ·Graduate entry is the JD, three years.
• ·Teaching runs on the UNSW trimester model, three terms a year.

What a ten week term does to a reading list

A ten week term is not a shorter semester, it is a different shape. There are fewer weeks between the class where a case is introduced and the assessment that tests it, so the backlog you would normally clear in a mid semester break has nowhere to go. The scaffold you start building in week 4 is the one you sit an exam on in week 11. Three terms a year also means three assignment clusters and three exam blocks rather than two of each, so the cycle that other schools run twice you run three times, with less recovery between them. The practical consequence is that catching up is a worse strategy here than it is anywhere else, and briefing in the week the case is set is a better one.

First year at UNSW is named differently

The first year law subjects at UNSW are Principles of Private Law, Principles of Public Law, Torts, and Crime and the Criminal Process. If you are swapping notes with students at other schools, or searching for study material by subject name, the two Principles subjects are the ones that will not match, because the equivalent ground is usually called Foundations of Law, or Legal Method and Statutory Interpretation. The content overlaps heavily with the Priestley subjects underneath, which is why the subject pages on this site are organised by the Priestley subject rather than by any one school's unit code.

2026 key dates

Dates come from published 2026 university calendars and can change. Your faculty timetable is the one that counts.

Three terms means three exam blocks and three assignment clusters, compressed into ten week teaching periods. There is less time between the week a case is introduced and the week you are assessed on it, so the reading backlog builds faster. Term 2 exams run 14 to 27 August, while most Australian law schools are in about week 5 of second semester, and Term 3 exams run to 9 December, after everyone else has finished.

Clerkship applications in this state

New South Wales clerkship applications ran 10 June to 12 July 2026. For a trimester student that window sits inside Term 2 teaching, which runs 1 June to 7 August, rather than inside a break. Applications, writing samples and firm research therefore compete with a live teaching load and then hand straight over to the 14 to 27 August exam block. That is the sharpest calendar clash any Australian law student has, and it is worth putting in a calendar in April rather than discovering in June. Firms set their own dates each year.

Clerkship windows differ by state and move each year. For 2026 the published windows were 10 June to 12 July in New South Wales, 6 July to 9 August in Victoria, and 13 July to 7 August in Queensland.

What your university library gives you access to

Before you pay for anything, use what you already have. Your university library has already funded research databases for you, and there are good free ones you can reach on top of them. This section is about what you can already get to as a student. It is not a statement about where CaseSharp's material comes from.

• Lexis+ AU and Westlaw AU

  Your university library gives you access to both while you are enrolled, at no cost to you. They are practitioner research platforms with authorised report series, deep commentary and mature citators, CaseBase and FirstPoint. They are deeper than CaseSharp on commentary and reported series, and learning to use them properly is part of the degree. Library access is usually the first thing your law school teaches you.

• AustLII

  You do not need a library login for this one. AustLII is free to everyone, supported by donations, and your library guide will point you at it anyway. A great deal of Australian material is publicly readable there, including older tribunal decisions and anything handed down since the CaseSharp coverage date, and on the open web an AustLII link is often the citation of record.

• Jade and JADE Professional

  Jade has a free registered tier anyone can sign up for, and JADE Professional is available free to law students with a university email address. Arrangements vary by institution, so check what your library lists before you assume you have it. It is a fast, well-liked lookup and citator tool, and it costs students nothing.

CaseSharp is not a substitute for any of that, and anyone telling you otherwise has not used them properly.

Where CaseSharp fits alongside them

It sits in a narrower gap: the ten minutes before a tutorial, the night a problem question is due, and the week you are compressing a semester into a scaffold. Four things specifically.

73,000 audited Australian decisions, current to the end of April 2026. Judgments handed down after that date are not in the corpus yet, so for anything very recent, check AustLII or your library database as well.

Your law school sets the rules, not us

Australian law schools treat undisclosed AI use as academic misconduct, and a finding has to be disclosed to the admissions board when you apply to be admitted. The rules are set by your university and often by the individual subject convenor, so check the policy for each assessment and disclose where your subject requires it. CaseSharp is a research and study tool. It does not write assignments, and every substantive output carries a human-review notice.

Why a general assistant is the wrong instrument for this

Subject packs

Pick the Priestley subjects you are enrolled in this semester. Each page covers what the subject includes, cases you are likely to meet, and how to use CaseSharp for that subject's assessments.

• Criminal Law and Procedure
• Torts
• Contracts
• Property
• Equity and Trusts
• Corporations Law
• Administrative Law
• Constitutional Law
• Civil Procedure
• Evidence
• Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Questions UNSW students ask

Does the trimester calendar change how I should use this?

It compresses everything. With ten week terms there is very little runway between meeting a case and being assessed on it, so the useful pattern is briefing as you go rather than catching up in a study week. Checking the citing cases is worth doing earlier too, because your Term 2 exam block in late August arrives while other schools are still mid semester.

My exam block is in August. Is that actually right?

Yes. Term 2 teaching runs 1 June to 7 August 2026, the study period is 8 to 13 August, and exams run 14 to 27 August. Most Australian law schools are in about week 5 of second semester at that point, so shared notes, study group scheduling and any national study advice keyed to SWOTVAC will be out of phase with you. Term 3 has the same problem in reverse: your exams run 26 November to 9 December, after most other schools have finished for the year.

UNSW already gives me Lexis+ AU and Westlaw AU for free. Why would I pay for this?

Because they are excellent at a different job. Lexis+ AU and Westlaw AU are practitioner research platforms with deep commentary, authorised reports and mature citators, and if you need those, use them, they are already paid for. They were not built to brief a case for a tutorial, format AGLC4 footnotes, check the citing cases behind a scaffold, or work in the ten minutes before class. That is what CaseSharp is for, and most students who pay for it keep using their library databases too.

What happens to my access when I finish at UNSW?

Your university logins stop working, usually within weeks of your final result, and the databases you spent years learning go with them. A CaseSharp account belongs to you rather than to the institution: everything you saved stays, and the free plan does not expire. That is worth knowing before your final semester rather than after it.

Other law schools

• USYD
• Melbourne
• Monash
• UQ
• ANU
• Macquarie
• UTS
• QUT
• Deakin