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 all Ontario lawyers as of September 1, 2024.

rangefindr.ca | Canadian sentencing research / Recherche sur les peines au Canada

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About rangefindr

If you have ever run into your courthouse library, out-of-breath and needing last-minute research on criminal sentencing, this is the tool for you!

LiRN is thrilled to announce a province-wide subscription to rangefindr.ca. Used in libraries, law firms, and courtrooms across Canada, it is now available — remotely and in your nearest courthouse library — to all lawyers in Ontario.  First offered as a Pilot project in 2024, it became part of e-LiRN in the fall of 2025.

For lawyers:  rangefindr.ca – LiRN

Click here to login to rangefindr.ca

How to use rangefindr.ca

Click a few tags that describe the kinds of cases you’re looking for and rangefindr.ca tells you what sentences were imposed in those cases. One more click and you can review the judgments themselves. rangefindr.cahas saved years of lawyers’ and judges’ time.

Short explainer about how to use rangefindr (2.14 min.)

Getting Started With rangefindr.ca Guide (pdf)

Check our CPD and Other Events page to find live rangefindr.ca training dates!

 

New!  Canadian Sentencing database rangefindr.ca announces new feature: Guide to Pre-Sentence Custody Credit  (July 2025)

Calculating credit for pre-sentence custody is a technical and rapidly-changing area of criminal law. The guide collects the leading cases, summarizes the rules, and flags the unsettled issues across multiple Canadian jurisdictions.

The guide also marks rangefindr.ca‘s adoption of the Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide (COAL) as its house guide. We are proud to support open access and grateful to the members of the COAL-RJAL Editorial Group.

The guide and future updates will be available at www.rangefindr.ca/eng/docs.

To Set Up Access to rangefindr.ca on your Lawyer Terminals

You can now add direct access to rangefindr.ca from your library workstations. If your workstations have a static IP address on file with LiRN then they are now authorized to access rangefindr.ca. Users on your workstations should be automatically logged in from the page https://app.rangefindr.ca.
Please consider adding an icon to your workstation desktops for easier access. To add an icon in Windows 11:
1. Download the file “rangefindr_logo_small_grey_bordered.ico”.  It cannot be included on the website, so please contact [email protected] for a copy of the logo.  This was mailed to all staff in March 2026.
2. Right-click on the desktop and click New, then Shortcut.
3. In the field labelled “Type the location of the item:”, paste in “https://app.rangefindr.ca/” (without the quote marks). Then click Next.
4.  In the field labelled “Type a name for this shortcut:”, paste in “rangefindr.ca — criminal sentencing research” (without the quote marks), then click Finish. This should create the shortcut on your desktop.
5. Right-click on the new shortcut and click Properties.
6. On the tab “Web Document” click Change Icon, then Browse.
7. Browse to the file you downloaded in step 1 and click Open, OK, and then OK again.
Anyone using the new shortcut should be logged in automatically. Please note that if you have several workstations that share the same IP address, they can only have one active session between them at a time.

REMOTE ACCESS for all Ontario Lawyers is available 

Please send them the following link to learn more information:  https://lirn.ca/rangefindr/
They will need to provide their LSO # to access it remotely.

 Acknowledgements

The pilot project ran from September 1, 2024 to December 31, 2025 through the Innovation and Equity of Access to Legal Information project funded by The Law Foundation of Ontario, and we thank the Law Foundation for this opportunity.

LiRN would also like to extend its thanks to the Great Library for their assistance in making remote access possible for lawyers, articling students, and paralegals as well as courthouse library staff.