Sources, licences & attribution
Every case on caselaw is public-domain or open-licence law. Below is a per-jurisdiction enumeration of every corpus we ingest, the licence it sits under, the method we use to ingest it, and what we explicitly do not redistribute.
Two sentences, on the record
We do not reproduce Westlaw KeyCite, LexisNexis Shepard's, or any proprietary editorial content from Thomson Reuters, RELX, Bloomberg Law, vLex, or any other paywalled legal publisher. We do not feed bulk text from sources that signal AI-train=no into model training.
Our briefs, outlines, flashcards, mock exams, and topic hubs are independent original work, written by us, drawing on public-domain judgments and our own analysis.
Per-jurisdiction corpora
United Kingdom
view case library →British and Irish Legal Information Institute
BAILII text is the primary England & Wales / Scotland / NI judgment surface. We link back to the original BAILII URL on every case page footer.
Ingest: Direct fetch with attribution; no bulk republishing of HTML pages.
The National Archives + Ministry of Justice
Post-2003 Court of Appeal + Crown / King's Bench / High Court. Open Justice Licence permits commercial reuse with attribution.
Ingest: LegalDocML XML download + structured ingest. The cleanest UK source we use.
United States
view case library →Harvard Law Library
Historical backbone for /us/. CAP went fully open March 2024 — no rate limits, no per-day caps.
Ingest: Bulk JSON download (~6.9M cases, 1658–2014).
Free Law Project, 501(c)(3)
Continuous coverage post-2014. SCOTUS slip opinions land within hours. Citation graph CSV is the data behind any future cite-with-treatment surface.
Ingest: v4 REST API (5,000 req/hr authenticated) + bulk citations CSV.
Supreme Court of the United States
Used for the 0–24h gap between SCOTUS hand-down and CourtListener publication.
Ingest: Day-of-decision PDF fetch when CourtListener lags.
Canada
view case library →Lexum / SCC
Primary SCC opinions. We do not pull CanLII bulk — CanLII Terms of Use forbid scraping for redistribution; we link to CanLII as a reference but the corpus comes from court-direct sources.
Ingest: Direct fetch from scc-csc.lexum.com per case.
Courts Administration Service of Canada
Federal-tier Canadian opinions, ingested per-case rather than bulk.
Ingest: Direct fetch from decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca / decisions.fca-caf.gc.ca.
Ireland
view case library →British and Irish Legal Information Institute
IESC / IECA / IEHC. Linked back to BAILII on every case footer.
Ingest: Direct fetch with attribution.
Courts Service
Recent Supreme Court / Court of Appeal judgments before they appear on BAILII.
Ingest: Direct fetch.
Australia
view case library →Australasian Legal Information Institute
Priestley 11 backbone. Casebook content (LexisNexis / TR / Round Hall headnotes) is strict copyright — we use medium-neutral citations and write our own summaries.
Ingest: Bulk dump request via AustLII feedback channel (per AustLII published policy) + direct fetch for landmark cases. We do not crawl AustLII at scale.
High Court of Australia
HCA opinions sourced direct from the court website.
Ingest: Direct fetch.
NSW Department of Communities and Justice
NSW state court coverage — the largest Australian state corpus available open.
Ingest: Open Data API.
New Zealand
view case library →New Zealand Legal Information Institute
Council of Legal Education compulsory subjects coverage.
Ingest: Direct fetch with 1 req/sec rate limit (per NZLII guidance).
Courts of NZ
Supreme Court, Court of Appeal — recent opinions.
Ingest: Direct fetch.
Hong Kong
view case library →Hong Kong Legal Information Institute
The cleanest scrape compliance across all our jurisdictions. /api is rate-limited, but full HTML access is permitted with attribution.
Ingest: Direct fetch — bilingual EN / zh-HK.
Singapore
view case library →Attorney-General's Chambers + Singapore Academy of Law
Singapore is the most legally-restrictive of our jurisdictions. Brief-only redistribution model; original judgments live behind LawNet's gate.
Ingest: We do NOT redistribute LawNet judgment full text. Caselaw briefs reference judgments via neutral citation and link back to the original LawNet / eLitigation URL. SSO statutes are ingested directly.
South Africa
view case library →Southern African Legal Information Institute
Constitutional Court + SCA primary surface. LawLibrary used as fallback for cases not yet on SAFLII.
Ingest: SAFLII robots.txt explicitly blocks ClaudeBot / GPTBot / AI training crawlers. We honour this: our ingest crawler uses a non-AI user-agent identified as Caselaw with contact address, fetches at <1 req/sec, and never feeds bulk text into model training.
What we do not use
- • Westlaw / Thomson Reuters editorial content — KeyCite, key numbers, headnotes, synopses, the West Reporter editorial layer, treatises, secondary sources. All paywalled; all proprietary.
- • LexisNexis / RELX editorial content— Shepard's citator, headnotes, case summaries, treatises, journals.
- • Bloomberg Law, Practical Law, vLex / JustCite, Wolters Kluwer — proprietary editorial layers, citator data, secondary sources.
- • Quimbee / Studicata case briefs — these are competitor-authored study notes; we write our own.
- • CanLII bulk content — CanLII Terms of Use forbid scraping for redistribution. We use court-direct sources for Canadian judgments and link to CanLII as a reference.
- • Google Scholar / Justia HTML wrappers — Google ToS prohibits scraping; Justia wraps public-domain text in proprietary HTML. We pull from CAP / CourtListener instead.
- • Any source signalling AI-train=no — for example NigeriaLII. We honour the signal: no bulk ingest into training, attribution + link-back where we reference.
Citation formats
Each jurisdiction page uses the locally-authoritative citation guide:
- • UK / IE — OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, 4th ed.)
- • US — The Bluebook (21st ed.) — implementation follows the open-licence Indigo Book (CC0) to avoid Bluebook trademark exposure.
- • CA — McGill Guide (10th ed., 2023)
- • AU — AGLC4 (Australian Guide to Legal Citation, 4th ed., free PDF, Melbourne University Law Review)
- • NZ — NZ Law Style Guide (3rd ed., Geoff McLay, free PDF)
- • HK — Hong Kong neutral citation system (court-issued)
- • SG — Singapore neutral citation system (Supreme Court of Singapore Practice Direction)
- • ZA — South African Law Reports + neutral citation per court
The Bluebook is a trademark of the Harvard Law Review Association — we are not affiliated; our US citation engine is built on the open-licence Indigo Book.
Frequently asked
Do you reproduce Westlaw or LexisNexis content?
No. We do not reproduce KeyCite, Shepard's, headnotes, key numbers, editorial annotations, or any other proprietary editorial content from Thomson Reuters or RELX. Every case page on caselaw is built from public-domain or open-licence judgment text, with original briefs and summaries written by us.
What licence is the underlying case law under?
Court judgments are public-domain or Crown-copyright works in every jurisdiction we cover. Specific corpus licences vary: CC0 (Caselaw Access Project), CC BY (CourtListener), Open Justice Licence (Find Case Law TNA), Crown copyright with attribution (UK / CA / AU / NZ / HK courts), educational reuse (BAILII / AustLII / NZLII / SAFLII).
Are case briefs on caselaw copyrighted?
Yes — our case briefs, outlines, flashcards, mock-exam questions, model answers, and topic hubs are independent original work owned by Caselaw Ltd. They draw on public-domain judgments but do not reproduce or remix any third-party headnote, key number, citator, or proprietary summary.
Do you scrape sites that ask not to be scraped?
No. We honour every robots.txt, AI-bot directive (ai.txt, AI-noindex), and per-source ToU we ingest from. Where a source (e.g. SAFLII, NigeriaLII) signals AI-train=no, we use a non-AI user-agent with contact info, fetch slowly, and never feed bulk text into model training. Where a source (e.g. CanLII, LawNet, Google Scholar) forbids redistribution, we link back rather than republishing.
How can I report a copyright concern?
Email [email protected] with the URL, the work you believe is infringing, your contact details, and a statement that the use is unauthorised. We will respond within 7 days and remove or revise content where the concern is valid.
Why does this page exist?
Transparency. Every legal-AI startup that has been sued out of existence (ROSS Intelligence; pre-pivot Casetext) was sued because the licence chain was unclear. We document our chain so you, our users, our investors, and any rightsholder can see exactly what we use, where it comes from, and what we explicitly do not touch.
DMCA / copyright agent
To report a copyright concern under the US DMCA, the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the EU Directive 2001/29/EC, or any equivalent regime, contact:
Email: [email protected]
Postal: Caselaw Ltd, c/o DMCA Agent, United Kingdom (request full address by email).
Please include: (1) the URL of the allegedly-infringing content; (2) identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed; (3) your contact information; (4) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorised; and (5) a statement that the information in the notice is accurate. We aim to respond within 7 days.
Disclaimer
caselaw is a study aid and case-research tool, not legal advice. For court filings or academic citations, always cite the official reporter — never this page.
Last reviewed: 2 May 2026 · Page revalidates daily · security · privacy · terms