Guides: Legal Research: Unreported cases

Finding unreported cases

Court decisions not published in the law reports are called "unreported judgments" or "unreported cases".

Note:

Unreported judgments can often be found in law databases or directly from the court's website. You may be able to purchase a pamphlet copy of a decision from Court Registries.
Some District Court (NSW) and Local Court judgments are available to the public.
In civil cases, the judgment is available only to the parties involved.

Westlaw AU
FirstPoint indexes unreported cases from September 1999+
To search: Click 'Cases', then 'Unreported Judgments'.
You can find cases by searching (using keyword or party name) or browsing.
Lexis Advance Research & US Research
First logging in? Select Lexis Advance Research under Where would you like to start?
Lexis Advance contains unreported judgments from all Australian States & Territories, and a selection of courts, commissions and tribunals.
To search: Type "unreported judgment" into the search box and select the required court(s) from the filters drop down, then enter your search terms
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)
- This link opens in a new window
Court judgments from Australian and New Zealand courts and tribunals.
To search: Click on Cases & Legislation; choose Jurisdiction and Court, and then add keywords to search box at top right of page.

New South Wales Caselaw
NSW Caselaw contains decisions for NSW Courts and Tribunals administered by the NSW Department of Justice. Coverage
Queensland Judgments
A complete set of unreported Supreme Court judgments from 2002. The contents of the website will be expanded, over time, as they progressively digitise and publish the Queensland Supreme Court Library’s print collection of unreported judgments (1972-2001).
Law and Justice Foundation
Decisions from all Australian jurisdictions

"Media neutral citation" or "medium neutral citation" is a citation that:

Note: only use medium neutral citation for unreported judgments.

A list of Australian medium neutral identifiers is available in the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (Fourth edition): Appendix, Table A, pp. 316-318.