A2AJ Canadian Legal Data

Open Access to Canadian Law for Everyone

The A2AJ Canadian Legal Data project provides free, programmatic access to 116,000+ Canadian court decisions and 5,000+ laws and regulations. Whether you’re a researcher, developer, lawyer, or member of the public interested in Canadian law, our open-source tools make legal information accessible in the format you need.

Why This Matters

Access to legal information shouldn’t depend on your ability to pay. While court decisions and laws are public documents, finding and analyzing them at scale has traditionally required expensive subscriptions or technical barriers that exclude many users. Our project removes these barriers by providing multiple ways to access Canadian legal data—from simple searches to bulk downloads for research and AI development.

This initiative supports empirical legal research, legal technology innovation, and the development of tools that advance access to justice, particularly for marginalized and low-income communities across Canada.

What’s Currently Available

Court & Tribunal Decisions (116,000+ cases)

Our collection includes decisions from key Canadian courts and tribunals:

  • Supreme Court of Canada – 11,000 decisions from 1877 to present
  • Federal Court – 34,000 decisions from 2001 to present
  • Federal Court of Appeal – 8,000 decisions from 2001 to present
  • Ontario Court of Appeal – 17,000 decisions from 2007 to present
  • Tax Court of Canada – 8,000 decisions from 2003 to present
  • Court Martial Appeal Court – <1,000 decisions from 2001 to present
  • Immigration and Refugee Board
    • Refugee Appeal Division – 14,000 decisions from 2013 to present
    • Refugee Protection Division – 7,000 decisions from 2002 to December 2020
    • Refugee Law Lab Reporter – 1,000 decisions from 2019 to present
  • Social Security Tribunal – 16,000 decisions from 2013 to present
  • Canadian Human Rights Tribunal – 1,000 decisions from 2003 to present

Federal Laws & Regulations (5,700+ documents)

  • Federal Statutes – Laws enacted by Parliament from 1870 to present
  • Federal Regulations – Regulatory instruments from 1945 to present

All documents are available in both English and French where translations exist, with full text search capabilities and metadata including dates, citations, and names.

How to Access the Data

We provide four different access methods to suit various needs:

API Access

Best for: Searching specific cases, building applications, real-time queries

Our RESTful API allows you to search and retrieve specific documents programmatically. Perfect for building legal research tools or integrating legal data into existing applications.

API Documentation | Code Examples

Hugging Face Datasets

Best for: Machine learning, academic research, data science

Access our complete datasets through Hugging Face, the leading platform for machine learning datasets. Ideal for training language models or conducting large-scale empirical analysis.

Case Law Dataset | Laws Dataset | Code Examples

Direct Downloads

Best for: Simple bulk access, offline analysis

Download the entire dataset in Parquet format—a efficient columnar storage format that works with most data analysis tools. No API keys or special tools required.

Download Instructions

AI Assistant Integration

Best for: Conversational interfaces, AI-powered legal research

Connect AI assistants and chatbots directly to Canadian legal data using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Enable natural language queries about Canadian law.

MCP Documentation

Who Can Use This?

Researchers & Academics

Conduct empirical studies on Canadian law, analyze judicial trends, or study the evolution of legal language over time.

Legal Tech Developers

Build applications that make legal information more accessible—from simple search tools to sophisticated AI-powered legal assistants.

Legal Professionals

Access comprehensive case law and legislation for research, with programmatic tools that go beyond traditional search interfaces.

Community Organizations

Develop resources and tools that help your communities understand and navigate the legal system.

Students & Educators

Learn about Canadian law through hands-on data analysis or use the dataset for teaching computational approaches to law.

Important Information

Data Quality

All texts are unofficial copies collected through automated processes. While we make best efforts, these automated processes inevitably produce some inaccuracies and incompleteness. Always verify critical information against official sources. Each document includes a link to its original source or instructions about how to obtain the original document.

Privacy Considerations

Court decisions are public documents but may contain sensitive personal information. Users must comply with applicable privacy laws and respect publication bans. We encourage responsible use that considers the impact on affected communities.

Licensing

Our code and data collection methods are open source under the MIT license. Individual documents retain the original licensing terms through which we obtained them (if any), which are included with each document. We’re actively working to expand access while respecting legal requirements.

Non-Affiliation

This project is not affiliated with the Government of Canada, the Department of Justice, or any of the courts or tribunals from which we have gathered data.

Get Started

Ready to explore Canadian legal data? Start with our GitHub repository for comprehensive documentation and examples. For quick access:

  1. Browse the API: Visit our interactive API documentation
  2. Try a notebook: Open our example notebooks in Google Colab or Jupyter
  3. Download a sample: Get familiar with the data structure using our sample datasets

About This Project

The Canadian Legal Data project is maintained by Access to Algorithmic Justice (A2AJ), a research initiative co-hosted by York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law.

This work is supported by funding from the Law Foundation of Ontario and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, with computational resources from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.

Contact & Support

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research or projects, please cite:

Sean Rehaag & Simon Wallace, “A2AJ Canadian Legal Data” (2025), online: GitHub https://github.com/a2aj-ca/canadian-legal-data

Last updated: August 2025