th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents

Vietnamese Legal Documents

A comprehensive collection of Vietnamese legal documents — laws, decrees, circulars, decisions, and other normative acts — sourced from vbpl.vn, the official Government Legal Document Portal operated by the Ministry of Justice. The dataset includes structured metadata for every document, raw HTML full-text content, and a rich graph of cross-document legal relationships (amendments, citations, repeals, etc.).

• Curated by: Thịnh Ngô
• Source: vbpl.vn
• Language: Vietnamese
• License: CC BY 4.0

Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

# Metadata for all 153k documents
meta = load_dataset("th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents", "metadata", split="data")
print(meta.to_pandas().head())

# Cross-document relationships (amendments, citations, repeals, …)
rels = load_dataset("th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents", "relationships", split="data")
print(rels.to_pandas().head())

# Full-text HTML content for ~149k documents
content = load_dataset("th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents", "content", split="data")
print(content.to_pandas().head())

Join the two on id (metadata) ↔ doc_id (relationships):

import pandas as pd

df = meta.to_pandas()
rel = rels.to_pandas()

# Find all documents that cite document 10420
citing = rel[rel["other_doc_id"] == "10420"].merge(df, left_on="doc_id", right_on="id")
print(citing[["id", "title", "relationship"]])

Dataset Structure

The dataset has four configs:

Config	Split	Rows	Description
metadata	data	153,420	One row per document — 16 metadata fields
content	data	178,665	Raw HTML full-text content
relationships	data	897,890	Directed edges between documents
legacy	metadata	518,601	Older crawl — English field names, more docs
legacy	content	518,235	Plain-text content for older crawl

metadata

Column	Description
id	Unique document ID (int)
title	Full Vietnamese title
so_ky_hieu	Official number, e.g. 115/NQ-HĐBCQG
ngay_ban_hanh	Issuance date (DD/MM/YYYY)
loai_van_ban	Type — Quyết định, Nghị quyết, Thông tư, …
ngay_co_hieu_luc	Effective date
ngay_het_hieu_luc	Expiry date (empty if still in effect)
nguon_thu_thap	Collection source (e.g. Công báo)
ngay_dang_cong_bao	Official Gazette publication date
nganh	Sector — Tài chính, Y tế, …
linh_vuc	Legal field / sub-domain
co_quan_ban_hanh	Issuing authority (551 unique bodies)
chuc_danh	Signatory title — Chủ tịch, Bộ trưởng, …
nguoi_ky	Signatory name
pham_vi	Geographical scope
thong_tin_ap_dung	Implementation note
tinh_trang_hieu_luc	Effect status — Còn hiệu lực, Hết hiệu lực toàn bộ, …

content

Column	Description
id	Document ID (join key → metadata.id)
content_html	Raw HTML body of the document

Note: Some documents in metadata do not have a corresponding entry in content because the portal only provides PDF scans for those documents (no HTML version available).

relationships

Column	Description
doc_id	Source document ID (join key → metadata.id)
other_doc_id	Target document ID
relationship	Edge label

legacy

An older, larger crawl snapshot with ~518 k documents. Field names and enumerated values are in English (unlike the current configs which use Vietnamese originals). Dates are YYYY-MM-DD. Use this config when you need broader coverage at the cost of reduced metadata richness.

legacy / metadata split (518,601 rows):

Column	Description
id	Unique document ID (int)
document_number	Official number, e.g. 115/NQ-HĐBCQG
title	Full Vietnamese title
legal_type	Document type in English — Resolution, Decision, Circular, …
legal_sectors	Sector in English — Finance, Education, …
issuing_authority	Issuing authority (Vietnamese name)
issuance_date	Issuance date (YYYY-MM-DD)
effect_date	Effective date (YYYY-MM-DD)
effectless_date	Expiry date (empty if still in effect)
effect_status	In effect or Not in effect
signers	Signatory name and ID, e.g. Trần Thanh Mẫn:2140

legacy / content split (518,235 rows):

Column	Description
id	Document ID (join key → legacy/metadata.id)
content	Plain-text body of the document

Note: The content column in legacy contains plain text, not HTML. The current content config stores raw HTML (content_html).

from datasets import load_dataset

legacy_meta = load_dataset("th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents", "legacy", split="metadata")
legacy_content = load_dataset("th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents", "legacy", split="content")

Statistics

Data Collection

All data was scraped from vbpl.vn using a Scrapy crawler (included under crawler/). Metadata and cross-document relationships were extracted directly from the portal's structured pages.

cd crawler

scrapy crawl vbpl -a seed_file=data/ids.txt                          # basic
scrapy crawl vbpl -a seed_file=data/ids.txt -a proxy_file=proxies.txt  # with proxies
scrapy crawl vbpl -a seed_file=data/ids.txt -a resume=1               # resume

Output: data/raw.jsonl

Limitations

• Coverage depends on what vbpl.vn has indexed; older or undigitized documents may be missing.
• Effect status reflects the portal at crawl time and may lag behind real-world changes.
• This is a snapshot, not a live mirror. Always cross-check with the portal for authoritative status.

Privacy

The dataset contains names of document signatories (public officials acting in their official capacity). No private citizen data is included.

Citation

@dataset{ngo_thinh_2026_vietnamese_legal,
  title     = {Vietnamese Legal Documents},
  author    = {Thịnh Ngô},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url       = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/th1nhng0/vietnamese-legal-documents},
}

License

Vietnamese legal documents are public domain under the Law on Access to Information (No. 104/2016/QH13) and the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (No. 64/2025/QH15).

The compiled dataset (schema, processing, curation) is released under CC BY 4.0. Not a substitute for legal advice.