SFU and Caseway AI Partner to Index 100 Million Court Decisions for Legal AI Access
Key Takeaways
- ▸SFU and Caseway are indexing 100 million court decisions to make them searchable by AI systems and the general public
- ▸The research will measure whether access to accurate, searchable legal precedent improves outcomes for self-represented individuals
- ▸By providing primary court decisions as authoritative sources, the project aims to reduce AI hallucinations and misinformation in legal advice
Summary
Vancouver-based AI startup Caseway has partnered with SFU professor Angel Chang to index over 100 million Canadian and U.S. court decisions in a format searchable by both humans and large language models. The Mitacs-funded collaboration aims to create a reliable, authoritative source that AI systems can reference directly, reducing hallucinations and misinformation in legal contexts.
The research addresses a critical gap: most general-purpose AI tools currently lack access to primary court decisions, leading them to rely on secondary sources like blogs and forums that often contain inaccurate or misleading legal information. By publishing official court decisions in a structured, indexed format discoverable by AI systems, Caseway's approach allows users to verify AI-generated legal information against original judicial text.
The project's research question focuses on evidence-based outcomes rather than automation: if self-represented and marginalized people can access accurate, searchable court precedents through AI-enhanced systems, will they make better legal decisions and improve their understanding of legal options? The collaboration emphasizes that this is not about replacing lawyers, but rather improving access to justice for communities currently underserved by legal resources.
- The multi-year effort is being developed as a Mitacs-funded collaboration with both organizations already advancing technical and research work
