Crown bodies and Non-Crown bodies

Before you do anything else, you need to establish whether your organisation is a Crown body or a Non-Crown body. The answer determines whether you need to apply for a licence to re-use Find Case Law data.

Crown bodies

If your organisation is a Crown body, you do not need to apply for a licence. This is because of the constitutional principle of the indivisibility of the Crown — it would not be appropriate for us to licence data between Crown bodies.

If you are not sure whether your organisation is a Crown body, check your founding legislation. A practical way to tell: if information your organisation produces is Crown copyright, your organisation is a Crown body.

Non-Crown bodies

If your organisation is a Non-Crown body, you need to apply for a licence to re-use Find Case Law data for computational analysis.

Find out how to apply.

Guidance for Crown bodies

The Find Case Law dataset contains personal data, including some special category personal data. When you re-use this data, you are processing it — and that makes your organisation a Data Controller under UK GDPR.

What you need to do

You must establish a lawful basis for processing this data before you proceed. Your Data Protection Officer (DPO) can advise whether your organisation has a sufficient legal basis. Document their advice in case your use is ever questioned.

If your DPO concludes that your organisation does not have a sufficient legal basis on its own, you could consider approaching the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) or His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) about entering into a data sharing agreement with them.

What The National Archives cannot do

We cannot enter into a data sharing agreement with you. We process Find Case Law data on behalf of the courts, for publication purposes only.

We are happy to answer questions about the dataset itself — how to access it and how to make sure you are working with the most up-to-date version.

Contact us if you need help with this.