Westlaw Canada features

The trusted tool for researchers in the legal industry

Learn about the content and features that have made Westlaw Canada the most reliable legal research platform for generations

Exclusive editorial enhancements

Find accurate answers faster with editorial material that helps you understand the law.

The Canadian Abridgment and Legal Topics

A comprehensive collection of over a million digests of Canadian case law organized by legal issue according to a single taxonomy, The Canadian Abridgment Classification System. This collection is exclusive to Thomson Reuters and covers significant reported or unreported cases received from the courts since 1986, except for Quebec civil law cases. Westlaw’s Legal Topics expand on the Canadian Abridgment Classification to include case law, the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, texts and annotations, legal memoranda, Causes of Action, Proof of Facts, and Practical Law documents organized by legal issue.

Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (CED)

The CED is a great place to begin your legal research. It provides a clear overview of any legal topic and gives context to cases and legislation relevant to your issue. It lists over 225 subjects alphabetically, with subtopics to pinpoint the area of law you may be interested in. You can also link to Canadian and international cases, commentary, and equivalent Legal Topics.

Words and Phrases

The success of litigation and transactions can depend on the precision of your terminology. With Words and Phrases, you can access over 70,000 statutory and common law terms judicially defined by Canadian courts and tribunals.

Index to Canadian Legal Literature (ICLL)

The ICLL is Canada's only comprehensive legal bibliography, containing books, articles, government publications, audio-visual materials, continuing legal education materials, case comments, and annotations available in English and French. Westlaw provides links from ICLL references to the full text of cases and articles. It also displays references in KeyCite Canada results.

Advanced legal tools

Elevate your research with leading technology.

Westlaw Canada Search

We’ve designed Canada’s most advanced legal search engine to help you deliver the best results quickly and with more confidence.

KeyCite Canada

Access a network of links from primary law to a wealth of supporting material to help you understand the law.

Better-organized, connected content

Organize and share your research more efficiently. Create, favourite, and share folders for organized access to your firm’s legal research. Focus on the information that is most important to you with convenient filtering and re-sorting options.

Custom pages

Personalize your online legal research experience by creating a page ideal for how you work. Organize your favourite content and research tools and clear away the rest.

Comprehensive content collection

Westlaw offers the most comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date collection of legal information.

Cases

Access to an extensive collection of important cases. You'll find unparalleled historical coverage, including unreported court decisions from 1986 forward and reported court decisions dating back to 1977. You can also view decisions published in Carswell's law reports from their inception and decisions predating 1977 from Westlaw's key courts and law report series.

Legislation

Pending legislation appearing along with current legislation helps you anticipate amendments not yet in force. Concordances of legislation let you compare similar legislation in other jurisdictions to aid interpretation and understanding.

Board and tribunal decisions

Access to an extensive collection of board, tribunal, and arbitration decisions with an expert selection of important cases via the Thomson Reuters Law Report Collections across all jurisdictions.

Articles, journals, and newsletters

This collection of law reports, journals, and reviews allows you to enrich your understanding of the law.

Human expertise

Behind the technology is human expertise providing you with time-saving guidance.

Editorial expertise

Our bar-admitted lawyer-editor team analyses, categorises, and summarises the law, creating editorial enhancements to help you research more efficiently — and with greater accuracy.

Expert research support

The industry’s premier team of legal research support professionals is available 24/7 to keep your research moving forward.

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