i-dot-ai/lex-graph

Lex Graph 🕸️

A knowledge graph of UK legislation, combining structural and free text information. Lex Graph contains public-sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

The source code for building Lex Graph and a demo application can be found on our GitHub repo. To learn more about the project, read the blog post.

Data

The core data (edges and nodes) can be found in the zipped core file. This contains the graph structure and legislations text content as node features.

Simplified edgelists in both csv and tsv format can be found in the edgelists file. This contains just the graph structure.

Tiny samples of the edgelist and nodelist can be found in the samples folder.

Limitations

This is a prototype and does not guarantee accurate data. The codebase and features are subject to change. Some functionality may be experimental and require further testing and validation.

• Data Coverage: This prototype currently processes UK legislation data from the National Archives, but may not capture all legislative documents or their complete revision history. Some older or specialised documents might be missing or incompletely processed.

• Graph Completeness: The relationships between legislative documents are primarily based on explicit references found in the XML files. Implicit connections, contextual relationships, or references using non-standard formats may be missed.

• Data Accuracy: While we strive for accuracy, the automated parsing and graph construction process may contain errors, particularly when handling:

  • Complex nested legislative structures
  • Unusual formatting or non-standard XML structures
  • Cross-references using ambiguous or incomplete citations
  • Amendments and repeals that are conditionally applied

• Legal Disclaimer: This tool is intended for research and analysis purposes only. It should not be relied upon for legal advice or as an authoritative source of legislation. Users should always refer to official sources for current and accurate legislative information.

Credits

This project builds upon and was inspired by the work of the Graphie team at King’s Quantitative and Digital Law Lab (QuantLaw), King's College London. Their original project Graphie demonstrated innovative approaches to legal knowledge graph construction and analysis of UK legislation, based on the Housing Act 2004. We encourage those interested in legal knowledge graphs to explore the original Graphie project available at: https://github.com/kclquantlaw/graphie.

All data is sourced from The National Archives legislation wesbite. Crown © and database right material reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Material derived from the European Institutions © European Union, 1998-2019, reused under the terms of Commission Decision 2011/833/EU.