Common Legal Help Questions
A curated, synthetic dataset of common civil legal questions asked by the public—tagged by legal issue and sensitivity—to support research, product testing, and development of legal help technologies.
Description
This dataset was developed by the Stanford Legal Design Lab as a representative sample of the types of civil legal questions people frequently ask online, through hotlines, chatbots, clinics, and help websites. While the queries are synthetically generated, they are rooted in real-world user behavior and reflect the kinds of questions regularly seen across legal help channels.
The dataset intentionally removes references to jurisdiction but preserves the structure and phrasing of natural user questions, making it ideal for testing legal search tools, triage systems, LLMs, and intake or Q&A systems. Each question is tagged by issue area, using the Legal Issues Taxonomy (LIST), and labeled for sensitivity, identifying those that may require location-specific answers, are time-sensitive (e.g., policy-driven), or involve high-risk or high-conflict situations.
This dataset is open and useful for:
- Academic researchers studying access to justice or user behavior
- Developers building legal information platforms, chatbots, or intake systems
- Product teams working on responsible AI for legal help
- Evaluators creating legal AI benchmarks or QA scenarios
The dataset is intended to help teams prototype and test legal tools with meaningful, realistic questions that capture the complexity of real-world legal need without exposing any private data.