CanLII Launches Search+, Bilingual AI Summaries, Redesigned myCanLII

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What’s New on CanLII – Spring 2026

Spring has sprung in Canada, and we think it’s time you get an update on what the CanLII team have been up to over the past several months!

Please find below a summary of the major projects we have completed and milestones we have reached, along with a preview of what’s ahead for the rest of 2026. As always, these initiatives reflect our ongoing commitment to improving access to legal information for the Canadian legal community and the public.

Platform and Interface Updates

New Display Options

In January, we launched a “Display options” dropdown menu in the CanLII search engine. The menu lets you customize the information displayed in your search results. You can toggle on or off:

1. Secondary metadata like dates, sources, number of pages, and number of citations,
2. AI enrichments, including short summaries and classification/keywords, and
3. Document snippets (you can also select how many snippets appear and their length). This gives you complete control over how much or how little information you see for each result, letting you tailor the view to your specific research needs. You can even save your preferred settings as defaults!

A Redesigned Homepage and Integrated Research Experience

In March, we introduced a refreshed CanLII homepage alongside a significantly enhanced and fully integrated myCanLII experience.

The homepage redesign focuses on making your most important research tools immediately accessible. For signed-in users, the homepage now includes:

• My research folders: quick access to recently used folders
• My alerts: an overview of recent updates and notifications This creates a more personalized entry point, allowing users to resume their work more efficiently.

The New myCanLII

The updated myCanLII modernizes how users organize and manage their research:

• Integrated experience: myCanLII is now built directly into the main CanLII interface rather than existing as a separate environment
• Streamlined organization:
  • Saved documents and notes remain fully accessible
  • Alerts and associated notes have been preserved
  • Research folders have been simplified into a single-level structure
• Automatic migration: previously saved materials have been carried over from the old myCanLII interface, with unsorted documents placed into a default folder To support a smooth transition, the legacy version of myCanLII remains available in read-only mode for one year.

Overall, these changes aim to provide a more seamless, intuitive workflow by bringing searching, saving, and organizing research into one unified environment.

AI and Research Tools

Bilingual Support for AI Summaries

This past October, **** CanLII introduced French-language AI-generated summaries for case law and legislation from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island. This update significantly expands access to Canadian legal information in French, particularly for jurisdictions where such content has historically been limited. For the small number of French-language decisions from these jurisdictions, English-language summaries were also generated.

In total, the project processed a substantial volume of material across these provinces, generating summaries for over 230,000 cases and legislative documents using a commercial large language model. These summaries are now integrated into CanLII and available to all users.

This work was made possible through the financial support of the law foundations of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island. It also coincided with a second wave of user research conducted in partnership with the Alberta Law Foundation and Lux Insights, which found growing awareness of CanLII’s AI summaries overall and confirmed that bilingual summaries are valued as a meaningful access-to-justice feature. We thank everyone who participated in the survey and look forward to continuing to act on your feedback.

Introducing CanLII Search+

In February, we launched CanLII Search+, an AI-powered research assistant designed to transform how users search for legal information.

Search+ allows users to enter queries in plain language (for example, full legal questions), removing the need for complex search syntax. The system translates these queries into structured searches across CanLII’s databases.

The tool enhances research efficiency by:

• Highlighting the most relevant passages within decisions
• Assigning relevance scores to help prioritize results
• Leveraging contextual analysis rather than simple keyword matching Search+ operates exclusively within CanLII’s curated database of case law, legislation, and commentary, with ongoing validation to ensure reliability and transparency.

Available to users with a free myCanLII account (subject to daily limits), Search+ is designed to support legal researchers of all stripes from laypeople to experienced professionals.

Commentary and Legal Scholarship

CanLII’s legal commentary collection continues to grow, offering practitioners, researchers, and the public even richer access to high-quality legal insight alongside primary law. Over the past several months, a number of new texts and updates have been added, expanding coverage across key practice areas and jurisdictions. These additions not only deepen the analytical context available on CanLII but also reflect our ongoing commitment to improving the accessibility and usefulness of Canadian legal resources.

Our deepest thanks go out to the various authors and editors of the resources listed below for supporting open access publishing and allowing their material to be on CanLII!

| Type | Title/Description |
| Journals | Revue d’arbitrage et de médiation / Journal of Arbitration and Mediation (all back issues until publication ceased in 2018)
Revue de prévention et règlement des différends/ Dispute Prevention and Resolution Journal (current and all future issues)
University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal (all back issues until publication ceased in 2009) |
| Conference Papers | 2026 Annual Review of Insolvency Law journal/conference papers |
| Books | Legal Aid Saskatchewan’s Gladue Submission Guide
The 2026 edition of Artificial Intelligence & Criminal Justice: Cases and Commentary by Benjamin Perrin
The Fundamentals of the Law of Evidence: Cases and Commentaries by Nikos Harris
Canadian Refugee Procedure by Joshua Prowse
Debt and Federalism, Volume 2: Provincial Efforts to Protect Insolvent Debtors in Canada, 1939-1960 by Virginia Torrie and Thomas GW Telfer
Three open access books from University of Ottawa Press: Intellectual Property Futures: Exploring the Global Landscape of IP Law and Policy, Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law, The Security of Self: A Human-Centric Approach to Cybersecurity
Two open access books from Cambridge University Press: Land Rights Now: Global Voices on Indigenous Peoples and Land Justice, Justice for Some: A Comparative Study of Miscarriages of Justice and Wrongful Convictions
One open access book from University of Toronto Press: Paradoxes of Professional Regulation: In Search of Regulatory Principles |

The new Theses & Dissertations category launched in March 2025 is expanding with contributions from individual authors. Since its launch, CanLII has published a dozen additional master’s theses and doctoral dissertations sent in by graduates from across Canada. The collection also received a 2025 Clawbie Award in the “Best Open Web Publishing” category – this is the fourth Clawbie that CanLII or one of its original publications has won!

The Canadian Open Access Legal (COAL) Citation Guide has proven to be one of the most frequently consulted resources in CanLII’s commentary collection – it has received over 100,000 total visits since its initial publication in June 2024. It has been championed by law librarians and is being used by many professors and their students at law schools across Canada. The French edition of the guide, Guide canadien de la référence juridique en accès libre (RJAL), which has been customized to focus on Quebec civil law, was published on CanLII this past February. The cross-Canada COAL/RJAL editorial team will update both resources as the legal information landscape continues to evolve.

This past month, we republished five open-access career preparation ebooks from Emond Publishing, aimed at supporting law students, licensing candidates, and internationally trained professionals at key stages of their careers. These practical guides cover topics including law school success, bar exam and licensing preparation, articling, and specialized professional exams, offering accessible, experience-based advice tailored to the Canadian legal context. We wish to thank Emond Publishing for allowing CanLII to republish these materials and make them more broadly available to our diverse body of users.

We invite all authors interested in publishing their work on CanLII to submit it via the CanLII Authors Program or to contact us by email at commentary@canlii.org.

Updates to Existing Resources

We’re pleased to share that three major projects are currently underway to expand and update key legal research resources for the Canadian community.

Work is well underway on the annual update to the CanLII Manual to British Columbia Civil Litigation as well as a new edition of a CanLII classic: the Canadian Legal Research and Writing Guide, ensuring both remain practical, current, and responsive to evolving legal practice. In addition, we are excited to be completing the CanLII Criminal Law Ebook, which will provide comprehensive and accessible guidance in this important area of law. All three projects are on track for completion and publication this coming summer.

We extend our sincere thanks to the many contributors who have generously volunteered their time and expertise to write and edit these resources—your efforts are appreciated by CanLII and the thousands of users who consult these documents every year!

CanLII Goes Down Under: LVI 2025

This past November, CanLII participated in the Law via the Internet (LVI) Conference, hosted by AustLII in Sydney, Australia. The conference brought together lawyers, academics, information professionals, government representatives and students to address the transformative potential of AI and the challenges of ensuring integrity, reliability, and trust in legal information systems.

Lexum and CanLII were proudly represented by Emma K. Elliott, Isabela Pocovnicu, and Brenda Alm — a powerhouse trio that brought sharp insights and deep experience to the event. Their presentations showcased CanLII’s integrated approach to partnerships and community engagement, particularly with regard to the growth and expansion of CanLII’s legal commentary collection. Attendees were also given a sneak peek at the AI-powered CanLII Search+ tool before its launch. The conference provided valuable opportunities to connect with colleagues from the global LIIs and Free Access to Law Movement and exchange perspectives.

CanLII and Lexum are thrilled to be hosting LVI 2026 in October in Montreal, coinciding with CanLII’s 25th anniversary and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s 100th anniversary.

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- 2026-04-07
- CanLII
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