Singapore, 18 November 2025 (Tuesday) – The Singapore Management University (SMU) will be developing Singapore’s first open empirical legal database with support from the Ministry of Law (MinLaw). Housed at SMU’s Centre for Digital Law, the three-year project will compile and release machine-readable datasets containing key statistical information about Singapore court decisions, statutes, legal scholarship, and court structures.
Named Singapore Open Legal Informatics Database (SOLID), the database will be freely accessible to researchers worldwide through a public website and Application Programming Interface (API), positioning Singapore alongside leading jurisdictions around the world that have invested in building up their legal data infrastructure. To complement existing case law and statute repositories, the project will focus on creating structured, research-ready data points that enable empirical analysis and technology development.
The project was officially launched today at an event held at SMU's Yong Pung How School of Law (YPHSL), featuring roundtable discussions with local stakeholders and international experts on priorities for legal data collection and applications.
Mr Lim Joo Hong, Director of the Legal Technology Transformation Office at MinLaw, said, “The launch of the SOLID project by SMU in collaboration with the Ministry of Law is more than just the unveiling of a new database. It is a step towards strengthening Singapore’s legal data infrastructure for the digital age, and aims to underpin Singapore’s continued growth as a global legal hub and a leader in technology innovation.”
Professor Lee Pey Woan, Dean of YPHSL, said, "This database project exemplifies our commitment to building the knowledge infrastructure that Singapore's legal ecosystem needs to thrive in an increasingly complex and technology-driven world. Through our Centre for Digital Law and initiatives like this, we are positioning ourselves at the forefront of the intersection between law, science and technology — equipping our students and Singapore's legal industry for the future."
Wide-Ranging Applications Across Legal Ecosystem
The database is meant to serve multiple user groups. Researchers can use the data to conduct social scientific studies of Singapore's legal system. Law firms and technology companies can use the data to build and evaluate legal AI systems, analytics tools and other innovations. The data can also be used by policymakers to identify systemic trends in Singapore’s legal system and make evidence-based decisions.
For law schools, the database provides realistic, Singapore-focused datasets for teaching students about legal data science and AI. Internationally, the project will also enhance Singapore's reputation as a leading legal technology hub by encouraging scholars and developers to incorporate Singapore law in their research and training datasets.
The project is led by Assistant Professor Jerrold Soh as Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor Dirk Hartung as Co-Investigator, supported by research engineers and student assistants from SMU.
Assistant Professor Soh said, "Singapore's legal system is internationally recognised for its openness and digital maturity, but home-grown computational research and tools focused on Singapore law remain limited. We will be building a crucial piece of legal data infrastructure that unlocks new ways to study, teach, and build for Singapore law.”
Four-Phase Development Over Three Years
The project will proceed in four phases over the next three years: (1) requirements gathering through stakeholder consultations; (2) data collection and verification with semi-automated pipelines; (3) publication with full documentation and API support; and (4) operationalisation through industry collaborations on database use cases.
An early iteration of the database is targeted to be released in 4Q 2026, with the full public launch including website, API, and comprehensive documentation slated for 1Q 2028. Alongside the database, the project will also produce a mixture of academic research papers, open-source code libraries tailored for Singapore data, and proof-of-concept applications co-developed with industry and international collaborators.
Strong Support from Across Legal Community
In conceptualising this initiative, the project team consulted extensively with key stakeholders across the legal industry. The proposal was reviewed by law firms, legal tech startups, leading international academics, as well as representatives from the judiciary and the government sector.
Professor Daniel Martin Katz, a leading computational legal scholar at Illinois Tech Chicago-Kent College of Law and Yong Pung How Visiting Professor at SMU, said, "High-quality structured data remains hard to come by in the legal domain. Singapore's database could directly inform industry-focused research and support building and evaluating legal AI tools, much as the U.S. Supreme Court Database has done."
- End -
Enclosures:
- Opening speech by Prof Maartje De Visser, Associate Dean (Research), SMU Yong Pung How School of Law
- Speech by Mr Lim Joo Hong, Director of Legal Tech Transformation Office, Ministry of Law
