Library and search

The library is the material everything else is built on. Tutor answers from it, pathways are made of it, and it is open to everyone without an account.

Browsing and searching

The Library is where browsing starts. It lists every article, and you can move through them A–Z, by topic, by jurisdiction, or by what was added most recently. The search box at the top of the Library searches across all of them.

Search looks at an article's title, summary and body. Searching for a distinctive phrase — a case name, a section number, a term of art — works better than searching for a general subject, because distinctive words narrow the field and common ones do not.

If a search returns nothing useful, try the specific legal term rather than a description of it: "proportionate liability" will find more than "when several people are responsible".

What an article page tells you

Beyond the article itself, each page carries:

• Jurisdiction — which Australian jurisdiction the article is about. This matters more than it looks. A rule that holds in New South Wales may not hold in Western Australia, and an article scoped to one jurisdiction is not authority for another.
• Subject — the area of law it sits in.
• Estimated study time — a rough range, meant for planning a session, not a promise.
• Learning outcomes — what you should be able to do after reading it.
• Summary — what the article covers, so you can decide before committing to it.

Saving things

Three things you can keep from an article:

• Bookmark it to come back to later.
• Save a citation you want to keep.
• Add it to a pathway — see Pathways.

Bookmarks and citations live in your Workspace, each on its own tab.

Checking the source

Articles summarise and explain; they are not the law itself. Where an article refers to legislation or a judgment, the primary source is the authority — not the summary of it. For anything that matters, read the section or the judgment.

Articles also carry a date. Australian law changes, and an article that was accurate when written can be overtaken by an amendment or a later decision.