Free access to subscription databases at your Ontario courthouse library!
e-LiRN is a suite of electronic resources available in all courthouse libraries across Ontario.
All of the resources listed below are available on-site at your nearest courthouse library (find all the libraries on this map). It’s worth the drive to access these time-saving, comprehensive and case-winning resources that you can use for FREE at the your local courthouse library! Courthouse library staff are also ready to assist you with all your research needs to efficiently help you answer your pressing questions!
NEW! rangefindr.ca is available REMOTELY to all lawyers in Ontario as of September 1, 2024!
vLex products are available REMOTELY
for many Ontario lawyers. Learn more and consult your local courthouse library staff for access.
e-LiRN Resources
| CPD Resources | Search the full text of Law Society CPD articles or browse by topic / chapter using AccessCLE. CPD materials offer practical advice from expert practitioners, especially on new/developing areas of law, cases or legislation. |
| Criminal Source WestLaw | Extensive criminal codes, texts by noted experts, and case law. |
| Estates & Trusts Source WestLaw | Schnurr’s Estate Litigation, Histrop’s Estate Planning Precedents, fillable forms, and more. |
| Family Source WestLaw | Child and spousal support guidelines, checklists, texts, case law and more. |
| HeinOnline | HeinOnline’s Core Content for Canada is a comprehensive digital library containing the full text of more than 3,000 scholarly journals, access to U.S. federal and state case law, thousands of classic legal treatises, and a wealth of government publications as well as the English Reports. This eResource is available through the Great Library portal. Please contact the Great Library to set-up your password: [email protected] |
| Lexis+ | Lexis+ Canada is a comprehensive integrated legal research and workflow tool providing a range of features designed to enhance legal research and practice. Access the vast collection of case law, editorial analysis, and data visualization with over 250 full-text textbooks and looseleaf publications in more than 30 different areas of law. Enhance your Legal Research (previously known as Lexis Advance Quicklaw) with more content and exclusive secondary materials. Experience AI with the research tool : Lexis Answers and expedite your legal research with ease by pinpointing AI-driven answers directly within the document where the answer is found: – Ask a legal question and receive up to 10 case recommendations that directly answer the question. – Save time by reviewing the answers directly within the results set. – Discover citable authority efficiently, without having to retrieve and read lengthy documents. – Quickly find legal definitions before diving deeper into our collection of over a million cases. – Identify legal doctrine and leading supporting case law, fast, and branch out to engage in expansive and thorough research. Rely on the up-to date practical material within Practical Guidance to support your day-to-day practice. Practical Guidance allows you to gain know-how from authoritative guidance, on-point precedents and extensive resources to help you complete your matters. Practical Guidance’s practice area modules offer broad, deep, and sophisticated guidance to help save time and work more efficiently. All Modules Available! Precedents, Clauses and Forms: Includes hundreds of relevant forms, model documents, sample court documents, drafting notes and practice tips. Checklists, Tables & Flowcharts: Provides step-by-step guidance for a given deal, task or process and strategies for dealing with issues that may arise. Practice Notes: Prepared and updated by leading experts in the area, practice notes provide high level “how-to” guidance and direction on a given deal, task or issue and include links to related documents such as precedents and forms. Automated Templates: Create high quality first drafts of documents by providing answers to an interactive questionnaire. Toolkits: Simplify your workflow and reduce your turnaround time by accessing a single view of all tasks, documents, and information needed to complete a particular process. Tools: Calculators help you speed up repetitive tasks and make the most of your time. Market Standards: Access robust deal point analysis and get an edge in your negotiation with insights from pinpoint searches of publicly filed deal documents for mergers & acquisitions deals. Legislation & Cases: Key statutes, procedural rules and cases relevant to the topic are included and are selected by leading practitioners. More Information (Flier) Track upcoming legislative changes with the Legislative Pulse service. Easily search through current or historical Bills and Regulations by Bill title, Chapter number, or affected statutes. Extract any relevant information from Lexis+ Canada to make sure you cover everything mentioned in your document with Brief Analysis.: – Retrieve solid authority recommendations without entering a search. – Find and leverage the most critical passages in lengthy documents, saving valuable time. – Gain even greater confidence that you haven’t missed anything in your legal document. -Analyze opposing counsel’s legal documents and easily note up their citing references to verify the validity of what they have cited. – Update old legal memos or legal documents to verify the cited cases and arguments are still valid, and identify whether there are new cases that should be considered. – Analyze a paragraph(s) from a treatise, case or other legal document, identify case recommendations, note-up citing cases and branch out your research from there. |
| Practical Guidance Lexis+ | Practical Guidance allows you to gain know-how from authoritative guidance, on-point precedents and extensive resources to help you complete your matters. Practical Guidance’s practice area modules offer broad, deep, and sophisticated guidance to help save time and work more efficiently. All Modules Available! Precedents, Clauses and Forms: Includes hundreds of relevant forms, model documents, sample court documents, drafting notes and practice tips. Checklists, Tables & Flowcharts: Provides step-by-step guidance for a given deal, task or process and strategies for dealing with issues that may arise. Practice Notes: Prepared and updated by leading experts in the area, practice notes provide high level “how-to” guidance and direction on a given deal, task or issue and include links to related documents such as precedents and forms. Automated Templates: Create high quality first drafts of documents by providing answers to an interactive questionnaire. Toolkits: Simplify your workflow and reduce your turnaround time by accessing a single view of all tasks, documents, and information needed to complete a particular process. Tools: Calculators help you speed up repetitive tasks and make the most of your time. Market Standards: Access robust deal point analysis and get an edge in your negotiation with insights from pinpoint searches of publicly filed deal documents for mergers & acquisitions deals. Legislation & Cases: Key statutes, procedural rules and cases relevant to the topic are included and are selected by leading practitioners. More Information (Flier) |
| rangefindr.ca | rangefindr.ca is a tool to help lawyers and judges find criminal sentencing ranges in minutes instead of hours. Click a few tags that describe the kinds of cases you’re looking for — such as assault cases where the accused is a first offender — and rangefindr.ca tells you what sentences were imposed in those cases. One more click and you can review the judgments themselves. Available remotely for Ontario lawyers as of September 1, 2024. |
| vLex Essentials of Canadian Law & more | vlex Canadian collections contains over 500,000 reported and unreported cases, including Maritime Law Books titles such as Ontario Appeal Cases and Ontario Trial Report. Flier about vlex Over 300 books and journals available electronically, including the Irwin Law’s Essentials of Canadian Law collection and Emond’s Criminal Law collection. More Information (Flier) Read more about vlex. |
| vLex VINCENT AI Legal Research | Vincent is a virtual legal assistant that finds legal citations, cited documents and the most relevant legal concepts in any legal document, generating a list of documents for you to review, including legislation, case law, books, journal articles and model contracts in vLex, A reputable AI product using only Canadian case law to review your documents. More Information |
Remote Access Legal Resources
| CanLII | Content includes: Case Law: Judgments from all Canadian courts, as well as decisions from many tribunals nationally. Legislation: Consolidated statutes and regulations of every jurisdiction in Canada. Commentary: The companion website, CanLII Connects, hosts a database of case commentary and case summaries by the legal community. Secondary Sources: A growing number of books, law journals, articles, reports, and other resources available electronically in CanLII.org’s Commentary section. Click here to browse this content. Canadian Legal Research and Writing Guide (formerly the Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research). 2018 CanLIIDocs 161 |
| Canadian Open Access Citation Guide | COAL-RJAL Editorial Group, Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide, Canadian Legal Information Institute, 2024 CanLIIDocs 830, <https://canlii.ca/t/7nc6q> A great resource instead of the more costly McGuill Citation Guide available by subscription via Westlaw. |
| CommonLII | The Commonwealth Legal Information Institute aims to provide one central Internet location from which it is possible to search core legal information from all Commonwealth countries, including case law, legislation, treaties, law journals and law reform reports. |
| FeeFieFoeFirm | FeeFieFoeFirm is a customized Google search engine designed to search law firm newsletters in Canada as well as the US, Britain, Australia and other jurisdictions. Law firm newsletters are topical (such as cannabis) and can be great source of expert information. Use their search box to search for legal experts, law firm bulletins, articles, press releases and more. |
| Great Library Research Guides | The Great Library offers these research guides to provide a starting point for your legal research. You’ll find guides on conducting primary and secondary legal and law-related research, as well as how to access these materials via resources available at the Great Library and online. |
| Journals | CanLII Commentary This includes many Canadian law journals, books, reports, and articles. Tables of Contents for Canadian Law Journals U of T’s Bora Laskin Library posts tables of contents for new issues of law journals monthly Directory of Open Access Journals This directory of open-access journals includes scholarly law journals – use “law” as your subject to find them. |
| World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) | WorldLII provides a single search facility for databases located on the following Legal Information Institutes: AustLII; BAILII; CanLII; HKLII; LII (Cornell); and PacLII. WorldLII also includes its own databases not found on other LIIs with decisions of international Courts and Tribunals, databases from a number of Asian countries, and databases from South Africa (provided by Wits Law School). |
Training Resources
- How to Use Digital Resource Tools – LiRN
- CPD Accredited Training is available from our vendors. More information on the resources and training available in these flyers!
Contact your nearest library for training opportunities (including CPD Professionalism hours)!
All lawyers in Ontario are entitled to use courthouse libraries’ resources for free. You are not required to be a member of an Association to access the library or its resources (LSO By-Law 13, 10).