Show HN: Open Dataset of the Lebanese Law
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The Lebanese University has an archive of all laws dating back to 1904 (legallaw.ul.edu.lb). People and AI can barely find it and navigate it. It also had outdated articles.
Now, more people are using it. Builders for their startups, lawyers for their work, and students for their bar prep. I'm still trying to get it trusted by authorities.
The database includes the edges between every law, article, ruling and Gazette issue. You can easily identify how they influence one another.
Articles are versioned, so you can see how it was affected by other laws from the date it was published.
100k unofficial english translations were added using LLMs. They aren't accurate, but they help with search and SEO/AEO/GEO. We're working on producing legally accurate translations.
47k rulings were PDFs, some handwritten. We converted all of them to text using OCR, flagging handwritten files. We're working on an HTR model specifically for those to increase the confidence.
Today, other datasets in Lebanon charge for this data. I'm doing it as a public service. I want change in my country. And, lately, I think it's through helping builders. Yet, what I'm doing is legally wrong, but hopefully morally acceptable.