Chat PDF

Chat PDF lets you talk directly to a specific judgement or piece of legislation. CourtAid reads the document, answers your questions, and highlights the relevant sections in the PDF.

Chat PDF with document viewer

How to open Chat PDF

From any search result, click Chat PDF. You can also open a document from chat citations or from a project file list.

CourtAid opens a split view:

• Left — chat panel for your questions

• Right — the PDF document viewer

Asking questions

Type your question in the chat input. For example:

What was the court's finding on unconscionable conduct?
Which sections of the Fair Work Act were applied?
Summarise the key facts in three bullet points.

CourtAid reads the document and responds with an answer grounded in the text.

Automatic highlighting

When CourtAid references a passage from the document, the relevant section is automatically highlighted in yellow in the PDF viewer on the right. Citations in the chat appear as clickable links — click one to jump to that passage in the PDF.

Chat PDF showing citations linked to highlighted sections in the PDF

In the example above, citations like s 67 of the Civil Procedure Act 2005 (NSW) and Alexander v Cambridge Credit Corporation Ltd (1985) 2 NSWLR 685 are highlighted in the original document, so you can read the AI's analysis on the left and verify it against the source on the right.

You can also click extract snippets in chat responses to jump to and highlight that section in the PDF.

Focus mode vs Explore mode

When chatting with a single document, CourtAid uses Focus mode — the conversation is scoped to that document only.

Toggle Explore mode (via the switch in the chat input) to widen the search to CourtAid's full database of 2M+ documents while keeping the PDF open.

Mode	Scope
Focus	This document only
Explore	This document + CourtAid's court database

PDF viewer controls

The document viewer includes standard controls:

• Page navigation and zoom

• Thumbnail sidebar

• Full-screen view

• Download and print

When to use Chat PDF

Scenario	Example question
Understanding a long judgement	"What were the key findings?"
Finding a specific provision	"What did the court say about limitation periods?"
Checking legislative text	"What are the requirements under section 12?"
Preparing for a hearing	"What arguments did each party make?"

Tips

• Start with a broad question, then follow up on specific paragraphs

• Click highlighted sections to read the full context around a citation

• Use Save to add the document to a Project if you'll need it again

• Switch to Explore mode if your question needs cases beyond the current document