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A-Z How to Find Information >  Law and Your Rights > How can I find a report of a court case?

• If the case is 1996 or later, or a leading case from earlier years, the first thing to try is a search on BAILLI (British and Irish Legal Information Institute). For further details of the cases available on that site see What case law can I find on BAILLI? on the site's Frequently Asked Questions page
• If a High Court judgement is not available on BAILII, then, according to Her Majesty's Courts Service (HMCS) Judgements page, you can contact the High Court direct for a copy (if the records are still available). For contact details, see the HMCS Courtfinder and select 'Royal Courts of Justice' (the High Court is part of the Royal Courts of Justice).
• Other key sites for law reports or case summaries are listed on the Cases, courts and tribunals page in WebLinks
• You could also try entering the basic case details into a search engine. Enter the names of both parties in quotation marks, as in this example "J. Smith v A. N. Other". If you have other details, such as the date, or the law report reference, enter those details too, outside the quotation marks, as in this example "J. Smith v A. N. Other" 1974
• For county courts and magistrates courts, see The Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines which provides, for a fee, basic information on county court judgments, county court administration orders, Magistrates' court fines and CSA liability orders. It also has High Court judgments registered after 6th April 2006. For details of the information available, see the web site's page What are the registers?
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Page last updated: 26th November 2013