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CanLII MCP server

Lets your AI look up Canadian court cases and laws by title, citation, date, and keywords.

This is a helper that connects your AI assistant to CanLII, the big free collection of Canadian court decisions and laws. Once it is connected, you can ask your AI things like which court decided a case or what a case is cited by, and it will go look it up for you. It is handy for lawyers, paralegals, law students, and anyone who needs to check Canadian legal information without clicking around a website.

What is an MCP server? The 30-second version

On its own, your AI can only chat with you using what it already knows. An MCP server is a small helper program that gives your AI a new skill or a connection to an outside service. This one connects your AI to CanLII, the Canadian legal information site, so it can search courts, tribunals, statutes, and regulations for you. When you ask a question, your AI passes it to this helper, the helper asks CanLII, and the answer comes back into your chat.

What this MCP server does

You ask your AI a question about Canadian law, like the name of a case or which court handles a certain type of matter. Your AI sends that request to this helper, which talks to the CanLII service. CanLII sends back information about cases and laws, such as titles, citations, dates, and keywords. The helper hands that back to your AI, and your AI explains it to you in the chat. You can also ask it to show which cases cite another case, or which laws a case refers to.

Flow diagram: you ask your AI “Find Canadian cases about rental disputes”, the CanLII MCP server connects it to CanLII, and you get back case and law details in your chat.

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What you can do with it

List the courts and tribunals available in CanLII
Browse decisions from a specific court or tribunal
Look up a case's title, citation, date, and keywords
See which cases cite a case, or which cases it cites
List statute and regulation databases
Browse statutes or regulations from a chosen database
Look up details about a specific law or regulation

Try asking your AI

“List all the courts and tribunals in CanLII.”
“Show me recent decisions from the Supreme Court of Canada.”
“What is the citation and date for the case you just mentioned?”
“Which cases cite this decision, and which laws does it refer to?”

What it gives back to you

You get back plain answers in your chat: lists of courts or laws, and details like a case's title, citation, date, and keywords. If you ask about citations, it shows which cases or laws are linked to a case. It does not give you the full text of a decision, only the information around it. Everything appears as normal text in the conversation, so you can copy it or ask follow-up questions.

Before you start

What you need

A CanLII API key (a kind of password for apps; you apply for one free on the CanLII website)
An AI app that supports MCP, like Claude Desktop or Cursor
Nothing else if you use the hosted version, since you do not install anything

Good to know

It only returns information about cases and laws, not the full text of documents, and every lookup uses your own CanLII key and counts against your daily limit.

Install it with your AI

Add CanLII MCP server to your AI, no technical skills needed

You don't install anything by hand. You copy one prompt, paste it into an AI that can work on your computer, and it checks, installs and connects the server for you, asking you when it needs something.

Sign in to get the install prompt

Members get a ready-made prompt that lets the Claude desktop app check CanLII MCP server, install it and connect it for them, step by step. You don't need any technical skills: you copy, paste and answer a few questions. Your connected AI can also find and install any of the 4,066 MCP servers here for you.