Tutor
Tutor answers questions about Australian law using the StudyLaw library and a set of trusted public legal sources. It is part of the subscription, at /tutor.
Read this first
Tutor's answers may be incomplete, incorrect, out of date or unsuitable for your circumstances. They are study material, not legal advice, and using Tutor does not create a solicitor–client relationship.
Check anything that matters against the primary source — the section, the judgment, the regulator's own page — and get advice from a qualified Australian legal practitioner where your own position is at stake. This is not boilerplate: an answer that is fluent, well organised and confident can still be wrong, and fluency is not evidence of accuracy.
Asking a good question
- Name the jurisdiction where it matters. "Under the Commonwealth regime" or "in Victoria" will get you a more precise answer than leaving it open, because much Australian law is not uniform.
- Ask for the specific thing. "What are the elements of the breach test?" beats "tell me about negligence".
- Name the authority if you have it. Asking about a case or a section by name is the strongest signal you can give, and Tutor is built to prioritise the material that matches it.
- Ask for a length if you want one. "In two sentences" is honoured where a reliable answer fits in that space. If it genuinely does not, Tutor will tell you rather than quietly overrun.
Reading the answer
Answers open with the direct answer and then support it. Most run to a few hundred words; longer structure appears only when a question needs it.
Numbered brackets are citations. A [2] after a statement points at the second entry in the sources listed beneath the answer. The sources shown are built from the numbers actually used, so anything listed was genuinely relied on.
Take the limits at face value. When Tutor says the available material does not settle a point, that is a real finding and not modesty. It is specifically instructed not to fill a gap from general knowledge, so a stated gap means the material was not there — treat it as a prompt to check a primary source yourself.
Follow-up questions
Tutor keeps a short window of the current conversation, so "what did you mean by that?" or "what about in Queensland?" resolve against what you were just discussing. Earlier turns are used only to understand what you are referring to. They are never treated as evidence for a legal proposition — a follow-up answer is grounded afresh.
Studying a pathway
The Studying selector lists your pathways. Choosing one tells Tutor which pathway you are working through, so it can answer questions about the pathway itself — its length, its order, what comes next — and point you to a related step when one is relevant.
It does not narrow or bias the material Tutor searches when answering a legal question. Tutor draws on the whole library whether or not a pathway is selected, so an off-pathway question gets the same answer either way. See Pathways.
What Tutor will not do
- Advise on your own matter. It will explain the relevant law and the analytical approach, and it will distinguish that from advice about your particular position.
- Invent an authority. It works from supplied material, and it is instructed never to fabricate a citation, court, date, section or holding. If you find one that looks invented, please report it.
- Guarantee currency. It states a temporal position only where the material supports it. Absence of a "this is current" claim is not an assurance that something is current.
Reporting a bad answer
Each answer has feedback controls. Use them — they are read. For anything serious, email support@studylaw.io with the question you asked and what was wrong with the response.