Case Law & Tribunals
Beta v2.0sp-08-case-law · v2 retrieval architecture
UK case law search with v2 retrieval: citation-match gate + hybrid BM25/dense search + legal heuristic reranker. 99.1% Hit@5 / 92.1% Hit@3 / 73.0% Hit@1 on the 330-question eval (2026-05-12). Covers UKSC, EWCA, EWHC, employment, tax, and property tribunals.
v2 retrieval architecture (shipped May 2026)
Citation match (deterministic: “[2001] UKHL 44” → direct hit) → hybrid BM25 + dense (Qwen3-Embedding-8B 4096-dim, RRF k=60) → legal heuristic reranker (landmark +0.20, court_tier_1 +0.15, sme_relevance_high +0.10) → context reorder → LLM. Each stage is measurable and falls back gracefully. Result: 99.1% Hit@5 / 92.1% Hit@3 / 73.0% Hit@1 on the 330-question eval (2026-05-12).
Latest Eval (330 Questions · 2026-05-12)
99.1%
Hit@5 (retrieval)
92.1%
Hit@3
73.0%
Hit@1
Synthetic 330Q corpus across employment, contract, tort, land, equity, commercial. Citation-match gate, doctrine classifier, reranker all measured. Up from 71.8% / 90.3% / 97.6% in earlier 2026-05 runs after surgical re-enrichment.
24,418
Cases Indexed
99%
Embedded
v2.0
Architecture
12 May
Last Eval Run
About this specialist
The Case Law & Tribunals specialist (SP-08) searches UK court judgments and tribunal decisions using a v2 retrieval pipeline that combines deterministic citation matching with hybrid BM25/dense search and a legal heuristic reranker. It covers the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, and specialist tribunals including employment, tax, and property, with the full Find Case Law corpus gated behind licence CAS-331091-J2V2X9 (applied May 2026).
The v2 corpus includes 45 fully-enriched landmark cases (Tier 1 employment law, EWCA Civ expansion, UKHL/UKSC archive) with doctrine classification, court-tier metadata, and principle cross-references alongside 20,896 v1 BAILII tribunal records. Every result includes the neutral citation, court name, date, and key findings. The specialist chains with SP-03 (Employment Law) for statute cross-references and SP-09 (FCA Regulation) for regulatory context.
Data Sources
45 v2 landmark cases · 20,896 v1 BAILII docs| Source | Status | |
|---|---|---|
Landmark cases (v2, fully enriched) | ||
BAILII landmark cases (contract, tort, equity, land, employment) bailii.org · full enrichment: doctrine, court tier, principles |
Loaded | |
Tier 1 employment law (Autoclenz, Pimlico, Uber, Hounga, Geys) Worker status, employment status canon. Shipped 2026-05-12 |
Loaded | |
Tier 2 EWCA Civ expansion (currently ingesting) 15 EWCA Civ decisions, incremental compact ingest |
Loaded | |
Bailey & Co synthetic test documents 22 docs, 8 categories, used for retrieval eval |
Loaded | |
Statutes (cross-referenced) legislation.gov.uk, linked via SP-03 |
Loaded | |
Doctrinal principles (cross-referenced) Extracted and tagged per landmark case |
Loaded | |
Legacy v1 corpus (pre-v2 architecture) | ||
BAILII tribunal decisions (ET, UT, FTT) bailii.org · employment, tax, property tribunals |
Loaded | |
Property and Tax Tribunal cases Within v1 corpus above |
Loaded | |
UKHL / UKSC archive Within v1 corpus above |
Loaded | |
Find Case Law expansion (licence-gated) | ||
Find Case Law Transactional Licence (CAS-331091-J2V2X9) caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk · applied 14 May 2026 |
Licence pending | |
Full UKSC/UKHL/EWCA/EWHC/UT/FTT corpus api.caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk · thousands of decisions |
Licence pending | |
Atom feed daily monitoring (takedown handling) Infra built, active when licence granted |
Licence pending | |
LegalDocML (Akoma Ntoso XML) parser Parser infra built and tested |
Loaded | |
45 v2 landmark cases · 144 statutes · 26 principles · 20,896 v1 BAILII tribunal docs · Find Case Law full corpus gated by licence CAS-331091-J2V2X9 · v2 retrieval shipped 2026-05-10 · Last eval 2026-05-12
See it in action
Example queries demonstrating v2 retrieval: citation-match, doctrine classifier, and Tier 1 employment expansion.
What’s the binding ratio in Royal Bank of Scotland v Etridge?
Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Etridge (No 2) [2001] UKHL 44 established the modern test for undue influence in surety transactions. The bank must take reasonable steps to satisfy itself that the practical implications have been brought home to the surety in a meaningful way, typically via independent legal advice. The case lays down the procedural safeguards (paragraphs 79–80 of Lord Nicholls’ speech) that lenders now follow.
Demonstrates citation-match: “[2001] UKHL 44” hits the case in one step without going through hybrid search.
[2001] UKHL 44Has the doctrine of overreaching been judicially considered?
Yes. The doctrine, embodied in LPA 1925 s2 and s27 (two-trustee rule), has been considered in City of London Building Society v Flegg [1988] AC 54 (HL) and Williams & Glyn’s Bank v Boland [1981] AC 487. The statute-query classifier picks up “overreaching” and routes to the property law domain, surfacing both the LPA sections and the leading cases together.
City of London BS v Flegg [1988] AC 54What’s the worker-status test after Uber BV v Aslam?
Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5 upheld the ET’s finding that Uber drivers were “workers” within the meaning of ERA 1996 s230(3)(b). Lord Leggatt emphasised the realities of the working relationship over the written contract: drivers could not negotiate terms, were tightly controlled by Uber’s algorithms, and bore the risks of the platform.
This sits with Autoclenz v Belcher [2011] UKSC 41 in the worker-status canon. Demonstrates Tier 1 employment expansion: Uber and Autoclenz both now in v2 corpus with full enrichment.
Uber v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5Ready to search UK case law with AI?
Court judgments and tribunal decisions with neutral citations. Built for solicitors, barristers, and compliance teams.