Justice-Quebec.ca | Access to Justice
Major law firms have been using it for years. CanLII just made it available to everyone, for free. Legal artificial intelligence is no longer a laboratory experiment — it is redefining who has access to the law in Canada.
This week, the Canadian Legal Information Institute officially launched CanLII Search+ — an artificial intelligence-powered assistant that allows users to search case law, legislation, and legal commentary in plain, everyday language, without complex syntax and without a paid subscription. Available free of charge to anyone with a myCanLII account, whether a student, a legal professional, or an ordinary citizen.
It is a powerful signal. But to understand what it truly means, it helps to first look at what has been happening inside law firms for several years.
The Firms That Were Already Ahead
While the general public is only now discovering legal AI, some Quebec firms have been experimenting with it for nearly a decade. Lavery stands out as a pioneer: as early as March 2017, the firm launched the L3AI — Lavery's Legal Lab on Artificial Intelligence — one of the first initiatives of its kind in Canada. Its mission: anticipate the legal complexities arising from AI, develop tailored tools, and train its professionals before the wave arrived.
Lavery went further by developing its own generative AI interface, governed by its internal policies and powered by relevant legal content — a tool designed to balance efficiency with professional compliance.
Other Quebec firms have followed. BCF Business Law has been integrating AI into its practice since the arrival of ChatGPT, positioning the technology not as a risk to manage, but as an essential economic lever. In Montreal, Prudence AI, a firm founded in 2019 by Me Dobah Carré, has specialized entirely in AI law and data protection — a field of specialization that was still emerging at the time of its founding.
According to Droit-inc, the legal sector ranks among the most active in Canada in terms of generative AI adoption — a trend also consistent with Statistics Canada data on professional, scientific, and technical services broadly. And according to a 2024 Clio study cited by Droit-inc, it is paradoxically small firms and solo lawyers who plan to adopt AI faster than large firms — with 40% of solo practitioners intending to do so within the next six months.
What CanLII Search+ Actually Changes
The tool, developed by CanLII in partnership with Lexum, converts plain-language questions into structured queries targeting the organization's database with precision. It identifies the most significant passages in decisions and assigns relevance scores to results.
A critical point for reliability: to prevent hallucinations — the phenomenon where an AI invents non-existent references — the tool draws exclusively from CanLII's internal database. A team of legal experts continuously validates its processes. Usage limits are currently set at 4 analyses and 10 query generations per day, with the possibility of adjustment over time.
The regulatory framework is also taking shape in parallel. The Barreau du Québec published a practical guide on the responsible use of generative AI for its members in October 2024. The Quebec Court of Appeal issued a notice in August 2024, and the Superior Court issued a similar notice as early as October 2023, both addressing the use of AI in court submissions. CanLII Search+ fits squarely within this evolving ecosystem.
What About Self-Represented Citizens?
This is where the launch of Search+ takes on a particular significance for us.
At Justice-Quebec.ca, we demonstrate how freely available AI tools — Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude — allow self-represented citizens to understand their court documents, organize their files, and draft their own legal submissions. Our complete guide on self-representation walks through the process step by step.
CanLII Search+ fits naturally into this approach: finding relevant case law, understanding a decision, identifying the legal provisions applicable to one's situation — without paying a lawyer's fees for an initial orientation. It is one more tool in the toolkit of the citizen defending themselves alone.
But access to legal information and access to justice are not the same thing. Finding a decision does not mean knowing what to do with it in a courtroom. That is why these tools must be understood for what they are: powerful starting points — not substitutes for professional legal advice.
Sources: CanLII, official Search+ announcement — Canadian Lawyer, Jacqueline So, February 25, 2026 — Lavery, L3AI — BCF Business Law — Prudence AI / Droit-inc — Droit-inc, Clio 2024 study — Statistics Canada — Barreau du Québec, Generative AI Guide, October 2024 — Justice-Quebec.ca, self-representation guide.
This website does not provide legal advice. This article is for informational purposes only.
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