> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.rytz.com.au/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Legal Research Library
> RYTZ's primary-source research surface — 2,389+ Gold Standard legal vectors covering Australian family-law cases and statutes, with intelligent search, filtering, and per-case detail pages. Free for every user.
import { Card, CardGroup, Note, Tip, Warning } from '@mintlify/components'
The **Legal Research Library** at `app.rytz.com.au/library` is RYTZ's primary-source research surface. Where the [Education Portal](/learn/education-portal) explains the law in plain English, the Library lets you read the law itself — case judgments, statutory text, and authoritative commentary — through a search interface designed for non-lawyers.
It is **free** for every authenticated user. There is also a public demo at `app.rytz.com.au/library-demo` that doesn't require sign-in (useful for sharing a specific case or section with someone outside the platform).
## What's in it
The Library is built on a curated corpus of **2,389+ Gold Standard legal vectors** — embedding-indexed entries each representing a piece of authority that comes up in Australian family-law matters.
| Type | Count (approx.) | Examples |
| -------------------------------------- | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| FLA sections | 200+ | Every section of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) and surrounding regulation |
| High Court of Australia decisions | 50+ | Stanford, Mallet, M v M, ZP v PS |
| FCFCOA Full Court decisions | 400+ | Goode, Pierce, Polonius, Bonnici, Kowaliw, Singerson, Kennon |
| FCFCOA single-judge decisions | 1,200+ | The day-to-day case-law that frames how matters are decided |
| Federal Circuit Court legacy decisions | 300+ | Pre-2021 Federal Circuit Court matters still cited |
| Practice directions + procedural rules | 100+ | FCFCOA Family Law Rules 2021, Practice Directions, Forms |
| Authoritative commentary | 100+ | LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, leading practitioner texts (where licensed) |
Each entry is structured for both human reading and AI search:
* **Title and citation** in standard form
* **Plain-English summary** (1–3 paragraphs explaining what the case decided)
* **Key holdings** (the legal propositions established or reinforced)
* **Surrounding cases** (cases that cite, distinguish, or follow this one)
* **Family-law-specific tagging** (parenting / property / FV / procedure / etc.)
* **Currency status** — whether the case is still good law, has been distinguished, or has been superseded by legislation
## How search works
Three search modes:
Type a question or description in plain English: "what does it take to get an FDR exemption based on family violence?" or "what's the threshold for varying final parenting orders?". The platform returns the most-relevant cases, sections, and Education Portal entries.
Know the citation? "Stanford v Stanford \[2012] HCA 52", "s60CC(2)(a)", "Goode & Goode \[2006] FamCA 1346". Direct lookup with surrounding-context expansion.
Topic tree mirrors the Education Portal's topic tree. Drill into Parenting → s60CC → safety considerations → cases. Useful for systematic study of an area.
Ask the [AI assistant](/ai/how-the-chat-works) directly: "find me cases where the court declined to make property orders under Stanford because the parties' affairs were already separate". The assistant searches the Library and returns specific cases with reasoning.
## What an entry shows
Each Library entry is a single page with the following structure:
### Case detail pages (`/library/case/:id`)
* **Citation header** — title, court, date, judges
* **Plain-English summary** — what the case decided, in clear terms
* **Key holdings** — the legal propositions
* **Facts in brief** — short factual summary
* **The decision** — what the court ordered
* **Reasoning** — the court's analysis, summarised
* **Cited authority** — cases the judgment relied on
* **Subsequent treatment** — cases that have cited this one (followed, distinguished, applied)
* **Currency status** — still good law? Distinguished in part? Superseded by legislation?
* **Related Education Portal entries**
* **Link to AustLII** — the primary source for the full judgment
### Section detail pages (`/library/section/:id`)
* **Section number and title**
* **Current statutory text** — the words of the section as in force
* **What the section does** — plain-English summary
* **Key amendments** — when and how the section has been changed (particularly relevant for s60CC, s79, s61DA post-recent amendments)
* **Leading cases on the section** — the authoritative interpretations
* **Practical implications** — what invoking this section produces in practice
* **Cross-references** to related sections and Portal entries
## How the Library is built
The corpus is curated by RYTZ's editorial team using a combination of:
* **Pinecone** for vector embeddings + similarity search across the corpus
* **Neo4j** for the citation graph (which cases cite which) and currency tracking
* **Supabase** for the structured metadata + access controls
The result is the legal-intelligence Edge Function that powers the Library's search.
The Library is a research tool, not a substitute for legal advice. Reading every relevant case in your matter type is useful preparation; deciding what to file based on your reading alone is dangerous. Use the Library to inform your understanding; consult a family-law solicitor for matter-specific advice.
## Saving for later — My Research
When you find an entry useful, click **Save**. It joins your [My Research](/learn/my-research) library — a personal collection of bookmarked cases and sections, with annotation support so you can record why you saved each one.
My Research is a premium feature; the Library itself is free. The distinction: the Library is the universal corpus available to every user; My Research is your personal annotated subset.
## What the Library will not do
* **It will not tell you which case applies to your matter.** Cases turn on their facts. The Library shows you the relevant cases; whether your matter aligns with one or distinguishes from one is judgement.
* **It will not predict outcomes.** Australian family-law decisions are heavily fact-driven. Reading 50 cases doesn't produce a probability estimate.
* **It will not replace primary-source review for high-stakes decisions.** For final-hearing preparation, read the leading cases on AustLII directly. The Library's summaries are accurate but compressed.
* **It will not stay current automatically with every new judgment.** The corpus is curated, not auto-ingested. New leading judgments take 1–4 weeks to land in the Library.
**The Library does not include every case.** Australian family-law jurisprudence is enormous. The Library's 2,389+ vectors cover the cases that come up most often in self-represented matters. If your matter has unusual features (international elements, novel legal questions, particular industries), you may need to search beyond the Library — AustLII (free) or LexisNexis / Thomson Reuters (subscription) are the next stops.
## Where the Library connects
* **AI assistant** — Library entries are the primary grounding source for the assistant's legal answers
* **Education Portal** — concept entries link out to relevant Library cases
* **My Research** — your personal subset of saved Library entries
* **Affidavit Preparation** — when you cite a case in an affidavit, the platform offers to insert the citation in standard form and link the entry
* **Master Case File** — strategy synthesis cites Library authority
## What's next
Plain-English explanations of every section and concept covered in the Library.
Save and annotate Library entries for your matter.
Ask matter-specific questions; the assistant searches the Library for grounded answers.
Curated list of the most-important cases.