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davidpistori/mistral-legal-french-dataset

Mistral Legal French Dataset A fine-tuning dataset for French legal domain, optimized with curriculum learning strategy. 📋 Table of Contents Overview Dataset Composition Methodology 1. Chain-of-Thought Generation 2. LegalKit Extraction 3. Curriculum Learning Fusion Data Format Quality Metrics Usage Citations License 🎯 Overview This dataset was created to fine-tune Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3 on French legal domain tasks. It combines two… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/davidpistori/mistral-legal-french-dataset.

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Dataset Card

Mistral Legal French Dataset

A fine-tuning dataset for French legal domain, optimized with curriculum learning strategy.

![License](https://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0) ![Dataset Size]() ![Language]()

đź“‹ Table of Contents


🎯 Overview

This dataset was created to fine-tune Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3 on French legal domain tasks. It combines two complementary approaches:

  1. 1.Structured reasoning (COT - Chain-of-Thought): 4,875 case law examples with 4-step legal reasoning
  2. 2.Factual knowledge (LegalKit): 10,000 Q&A examples on French law

Organization: The dataset implements curriculum learning, a progressive learning technique validated by 2025 academic research showing 15-20% performance improvement over random ordering.

Examples 1 → 10,000      : LegalKit (simple Q&A)
Examples 10,001 → 14,875 : COT (complex reasoning)

Research objective: This work aims to demonstrate that mid-sized open-source models (7B parameters) can achieve high performance on specialized legal tasks through strategic data curation and curriculum learning. By focusing on efficient fine-tuning of accessible models, we contribute to the development of high-quality, open-source legal AI tools that can be deployed cost-effectively.

Expected outcome: A model capable of both factual responses and structured legal analysis, suitable for integration into open-source legal assistance applications.


📊 Dataset Composition

TypeExamples%Avg. LengthCharacteristics
LegalKit10,00067.2%828 charsDirect Q&A on legal articles
COT4,87532.8%2,305 charsLegal Syllogism structured reasoning
Total14,875100%1,312 chars100% validated

Content Richness

  • —63,284 legal article references (6,970 unique articles)
  • —56 specialized legal terms detected
  • —75.1% of examples contain legal terminology
  • —COT structure validated at 99.98% (4,874/4,875)

🔬 Methodology

1. Chain-of-Thought Generation

1.1 Data Source

Source dataset: judilibre/jurica-tribunal_judiciaire (HuggingFace)

  • —French court decisions (judicial tribunals)
  • —Public case law data
  • —800,000+ available decisions
1.2 Preparation Pipeline (3 stages)
Stage 1: Intelligent Filtering (PrepCOT/1_filtrage_tj.py)

Goal: Select 32,000 best cases for COT generation

Quality criteria:

python
Minimums (reasoning quality):
- Facts exposition: ≥ 1,500 characters
- Legal reasoning: ≥ 8,000 characters
- Decision: ≥ 200 characters
- Date: ≥ 2020

Maximums (LLM token optimization):
- Facts: ≤ 12,000 characters
- Reasoning: ≤ 25,000 characters
- Decision: ≤ 5,000 characters

Advanced scoring system:

  • —Optimal reasoning length (12k-20k chars): +25 points
  • —Optimal total size (15k-32k chars): +20 points
  • —Descriptive solution (>50 chars): +20 points
  • —Detailed facts (>2k chars): +15 points
  • —Recent decision (≥2023): +15 points
  • —Legal references detected: +10 points

Result: 32,000 top-quality cases selected

Stage 2: Structured Parsing (PrepCOT/2_parsing_tj_v2.py)

Legal component extraction:

  1. 1.Applicable legal articles (regex extraction)
  2. 2.Formats: "Article X du code civil", "L. XXX", "R. XXX"
  3. 3.Normalization and deduplication
  4. 4.Short references for RAG systems
  1. 1.Factual context
  2. 2.Complete raw facts (from 'exposé' section)
  3. 3.No truncation (Legal Syllogism requires full reasoning)
  1. 1.Source reasoning
  2. 2.Complete legal reasoning (from 'motivations' section)
  3. 3.Decision dispositif (judicial conclusion)
  4. 4.Extracted issue (legal problem statement)
  1. 1.Intelligent cleaning
  2. 2.Noise removal (procedural references)
  3. 3.Argumentative structure preservation
  4. 4.Length validation

Output: PrepCOT/parsed_data.jsonl (392 MB, 32,000 parsed examples)

Stage 3: COT Generation with LLM (generate_cot_optimized.py)

Model used: Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-4bit (local MLX)

  • —Why Qwen? Outstanding structured generation in French
  • —4-bit quantization: Memory optimization for M4 Pro (24 GB)
  • —Local execution: Quality control and zero cost

Prompt engineering - Legal Syllogism:

The model generates ChatML format examples with a 4-section structure (in French):

markdown
### 1. Situation juridique
[Question reformulation + legal problem identification]

### 2. Cadre juridique applicable
[Legal article citations + principle explanations]

### 3. Analyse et conditions
[Conditions to be met with numbered list]

### 4. Réponse et conseils
[Direct answer + practical guidance]

Generation configuration:

python
max_tokens: 3000
temperature: 0.7
top_p: 0.9

Strict validation:

  • —Valid ChatML JSON format
  • —All 4 sections present
  • —System/assistant article consistency
  • —No empty messages

Process:

  1. 1.Random shuffle (seed=42) of 32,000 cases
  2. 2.Sequential generation with checkpoints (every 500)
  3. 3.Average time: ~19 seconds/COT
  4. 4.Total duration: ~102 hours (M4 Pro)

Results:

  • —4,875 validated COTs (initial target: 5,000)
  • —Success rate: ~73% (failures = invalid JSON or incomplete structure)
  • —Final file: jurisprudence_cot_v3_5k.jsonl (12.9 MB)

2. LegalKit Extraction

2.1 Data Source

Source dataset: louisbrulenaudet/legalkit (HuggingFace)

  • —French law Q&A dataset
  • —50,000+ available examples
  • —Format: {query, output}

Attribution required:

bibtex
@misc{legalkit,
  author = {Louis Brulé Naudet},
  title = {LegalKit: French Legal Question Answering Dataset},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/louisbrulenaudet/legalkit}
}
2.2 Selection Pipeline (LegalKitPreparation/prepare_legalkit_10k.py)

Step 1: Quality filtering

python
Criteria:
- Non-empty query with ≥ 50 characters
- Non-empty output with ≥ 50 characters

Step 2: Random sampling

python
Target: 10,000 examples
Seed: 42 (reproducibility)
Method: shuffle + select

Step 3: ChatML conversion

json
{
  "messages": [
    {"role": "user", "content": "<query>"},
    {"role": "assistant", "content": "<output>"}
  ]
}

Difference from COT: No system message (direct retrieval)

Result: LegalKitPreparation/legalkit_10k.jsonl (9.4 MB)


3. Curriculum Learning Fusion

3.1 Curriculum Learning Principles

Definition: Progressive learning technique where the model learns simple tasks before complex ones.

Academic research:

"Strategic Data Ordering: Enhancing LLM Performance through Curriculum Learning" (2025) Results: +15-20% performance vs random ordering

Application to our dataset:

  1. 1.Phase 1 (examples 1-10,000): LegalKit - Short factual Q&A
  2. 2.Phase 2 (examples 10,001-14,875): COT - Complex structured reasoning

Rationale:

  • —Model first learns to retrieve and present knowledge
  • —Then learns to reason and structure legal analyses
  • —Faster convergence and better generalization
3.2 Fusion Script (prepare_autotrain_dataset.py)

Step 1: Loading

python
LegalKit: 10,000 examples
COT: 4,875 examples

Step 2: Harmonization

  • —Unified format: {"messages": [...]}
  • —COT extraction: ex["cot"]["messages"] → {"messages": [...]}
  • —Structure validation

Step 3: Strict validation

python
Checks:
âś“ "messages" key present
âś“ Non-empty list
âś“ Each message has "role" and "content"
âś“ No empty content

Step 4: Curriculum application

python
# IMPORTANT: No shuffling!
final_dataset = legalkit_valid + cot_valid

Step 5: JSONL export

python
Output: dataset_autotrain_curriculum.jsonl (20.7 MB)
Format: 1 JSON per line
Encoding: UTF-8

Step 6: Statistics

json
{
  "total_count": 14875,
  "legalkit": {"count": 10000, "avg_length_chars": 828},
  "cot": {"count": 4875, "avg_length_chars": 2305},
  "valid_examples": 14875
}

đź“„ Data Format

General Structure

Each example follows the ChatML format (compatible with AutoTrain, HuggingFace TRL, Axolotl):

json
{
  "messages": [
    {"role": "system", "content": "..."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "..."},
    {"role": "assistant", "content": "..."}
  ]
}

LegalKit Example (simple)

json
{
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "Quelles sont les conditions pour résilier un bail d'habitation ?"
    },
    {
      "role": "assistant",
      "content": "Selon l'article 15 de la loi n°89-462 du 6 juillet 1989, le locataire peut résilier le contrat à tout moment, sous réserve de respecter un préavis de 3 mois (réduit à 1 mois dans certaines situations : mutation professionnelle, perte d'emploi, etc.). La résiliation doit être notifiée par lettre recommandée avec AR."
    }
  ]
}

COT Example (complex)

json
{
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "system",
      "content": "Voici les articles de loi pertinents:\n\n- Article 1792 du code civil\n- Article 1792-2 du code civil\n- Article L. 243-1 du code des assurances\n\nDans ta réponse, cite explicitement les numéros d'articles utilisés."
    },
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "J'ai fait construire une maison il y a 8 ans et des fissures importantes sont apparues récemment. Le constructeur refuse d'intervenir en disant que la garantie est expirée. Quels sont mes recours ?"
    },
    {
      "role": "assistant",
      "content": "### 1. Situation juridique\n\nVous faites face à l'apparition de fissures importantes 8 ans après la construction de votre maison, alors que le constructeur invoque l'expiration de la garantie. La question juridique est de savoir si ces fissures peuvent être couvertes par la garantie décennale (article 1792 du code civil) et quels recours vous disposez.\n\n### 2. Cadre juridique applicable\n\n**Article 1792 du code civil** : \"Tout constructeur d'un ouvrage est responsable de plein droit, envers le maître ou l'acquéreur de l'ouvrage, des dommages qui compromettent la solidité de l'ouvrage ou qui, l'affectant dans l'un de ses éléments constitutifs ou l'un de ses éléments d'équipement, le rendent impropre à sa destination.\"\n\n**Durée** : Cette garantie s'applique pendant 10 ans à compter de la réception des travaux (article 1792-4-1).\n\n**Article 1792-2** : Précise que cette garantie s'applique même aux vices apparents non décelés lors de la réception.\n\n### 3. Analyse et conditions\n\nPour bénéficier de la garantie décennale, les conditions suivantes doivent être remplies :\n\n1. **Délai de 10 ans** : Les fissures sont apparues 8 ans après la construction → ✅ Vous êtes dans le délai\n2. **Nature du désordre** : Les fissures doivent compromettre la solidité ou l'usage de l'ouvrage\n3. **Lien de causalité** : Les fissures doivent résulter d'un vice de construction\n\n**Points d'attention** :\n- Les **fissures importantes** peuvent compromettre la solidité (article 1792)\n- Une expertise technique sera probablement nécessaire\n- L'assurance dommages-ouvrage (si souscrite) peut faciliter l'indemnisation\n\n### 4. Réponse et conseils\n\n**Vous pouvez invoquer la garantie décennale**, car :\n✅ Vous êtes dans le délai de 10 ans\n✅ Les fissures importantes peuvent compromettre la solidité\n\n**Démarches à suivre** :\n\n1. **Mandater un expert** (expert judiciaire ou expert privé) pour évaluer :\n   - La nature des fissures (structurelles ou superficielles)\n   - L'origine (vice de construction, sol, etc.)\n   - L'impact sur la solidité\n\n2. **Contacter votre assurance dommages-ouvrage** (si souscrite) : elle doit préfinancer les réparations sans attendre la détermination des responsabilités\n\n3. **Mise en demeure du constructeur** par lettre recommandée avec AR :\n   - Invoquer l'article 1792 du code civil\n   - Joindre le rapport d'expertise\n   - Exiger la prise en charge des réparations\n\n4. **Si refus** : Saisir le tribunal judiciaire compétent (action en responsabilité décennale)\n\n**Important** : Conservez tous les documents (rapport de réception, correspondances, photos des fissures) et agissez rapidement pour préserver vos droits."
    }
  ]
}

âś… Quality Metrics

Structural Validation

CriterionResultStatus
Valid examples14,875/14,875 (100%)âś… Perfect
Empty messages0/14,875 (0%)âś… Perfect
JSON format14,875/14,875 (100%)âś… Perfect
COT structure4,874/4,875 (99.98%)âś… Near perfect

Legal Content Validation

CriterionResultStatus
Article references63,284 foundâś… Excellent
Unique articles6,970 differentâś… Very rich
Valid formats100%âś… Perfect
Legal terminology11,168/14,875 (75.1%)âś… Good
Unique terms56 detectedâś… Very good

Top 10 Most Cited Articles

ArticleOccurrencesDomain
Article 7004,333Procedural costs
Article 6963,217Civil procedure
Article 5142,520Civil procedure
Article 4722,151Civil procedure
Article 13532,108Burden of proof
Article 1343-51,696Formal notice
Article 11031,481Contracts
Article 1231-61,336Liability
Article 12401,336Tort liability
Article 1343-2875Damages

Comparative Quality Assessment

AspectOur DatasetTypical DatasetAssessment
Size14,8751,000-10,000âś… Excellent
Valid formats100%85-95%âś… Perfect
COT structure99.98%90-95%âś… Exceptional
Legal terminology75.1%60-80%âś… Good
Unique articles6,970500-2,000âś… Very rich
Curriculum learningYesRareâś… Optimal

Conclusion: Production-grade professional dataset, certified ready for fine-tuning.


🚀 Usage

Upload to HuggingFace Hub

Via CLI (recommended)
bash
# Installation
pip install huggingface_hub

# Login
huggingface-cli login

# Upload
huggingface-cli upload VinceGx33/mistral-legal-french-dataset \
  dataset_autotrain_curriculum.jsonl \
  --repo-type dataset
Via Python
python
from huggingface_hub import HfApi

api = HfApi()
api.upload_file(
    path_or_fileobj="dataset_autotrain_curriculum.jsonl",
    path_in_repo="dataset_autotrain_curriculum.jsonl",
    repo_id="VinceGx33/mistral-legal-french-dataset",
    repo_type="dataset"
)

Fine-tuning with AutoTrain

1. Go to https://huggingface.co/autotrain
2. Recommended Configuration
yaml
Base model: mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3
GPU: T4 Medium ($0.60/h)

LoRA:
  rank: 16
  alpha: 32
  dropout: 0.05

Training:
  epochs: 3
  batch_size: 4
  learning_rate: 2e-4
  warmup_steps: 100

Validation:
  split: 0.05
3. Cost Estimate
  • —Duration: 2-3 hours
  • —Cost: ~$1.20-1.80 (~€1.10-1.65)

Loading the Dataset

With datasets (HuggingFace)
python
from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("VinceGx33/mistral-legal-french-dataset", split="train")

# First example
print(dataset[0])

# Filter LegalKit (examples 0-9999)
legalkit = dataset.select(range(10000))

# Filter COT (examples 10000-14874)
cot = dataset.select(range(10000, 14875))
Local Loading
python
import json

examples = []
with open("dataset_autotrain_curriculum.jsonl", "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    for line in f:
        examples.append(json.loads(line))

print(f"Loaded {len(examples)} examples")

Fine-tuning with TRL (HuggingFace)

python
from trl import SFTTrainer
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load model
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3")
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3")

# Load dataset
dataset = load_dataset("VinceGx33/mistral-legal-french-dataset", split="train")

# LoRA configuration
from peft import LoraConfig
lora_config = LoraConfig(
    r=16,
    lora_alpha=32,
    lora_dropout=0.05,
    target_modules=["q_proj", "k_proj", "v_proj", "o_proj"]
)

# Trainer
trainer = SFTTrainer(
    model=model,
    train_dataset=dataset,
    tokenizer=tokenizer,
    peft_config=lora_config,
    max_seq_length=2048,
    dataset_text_field="messages",
    args={
        "output_dir": "./results",
        "num_train_epochs": 3,
        "per_device_train_batch_size": 4,
        "learning_rate": 2e-4,
        "warmup_steps": 100,
    }
)

trainer.train()

📚 Citations

LegalKit Dataset

bibtex
@misc{legalkit,
  author = {Louis Brulé Naudet},
  title = {LegalKit: French Legal Question Answering Dataset},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/louisbrulenaudet/legalkit}
}

Judilibre Dataset

bibtex
@misc{judilibre_jurica,
  author = {Judilibre},
  title = {JURICA - Tribunal Judiciaire Dataset},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/judilibre/jurica-tribunal_judiciaire}
}

Curriculum Learning Research

bibtex
@article{curriculum_learning_2025,
  title={Strategic Data Ordering: Enhancing LLM Performance through Curriculum Learning},
  author={Various},
  year={2025},
  note={Performance improvement: +15-20% vs random ordering}
}

This Dataset

bibtex
@misc{mistral_legal_french,
  author = {VinceGx33},
  title = {Mistral Legal French Dataset},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/VinceGx33/mistral-legal-french-dataset},
  note = {14,875 examples with curriculum learning}
}

📜 License

Apache License 2.0

This dataset is distributed under the Apache 2.0 License, permitting commercial use and free modification.

Attribution required for:

  • —LegalKit (louisbrulenaudet/legalkit)
  • —Judilibre JURICA (judilibre/jurica-tribunal_judiciaire)

đź”§ Reproduction

Prerequisites

bash
# Python 3.10+
pip install datasets transformers huggingface_hub mlx-lm

Provided Scripts

  1. 1.PrepCOT/1_filtrage_tj.py: Filter top 32,000 cases
  2. 2.PrepCOT/2_parsing_tj_v2.py: Parse and structure data
  3. 3.generate_cot_optimized.py: Generate COTs with Qwen2.5-7B
  4. 4.LegalKitPreparation/prepare_legalkit_10k.py: Extract 10k LegalKit
  5. 5.prepare_autotrain_dataset.py: Merge with curriculum learning

Reproduction Commands

bash
# 1. Prepare COT
cd PrepCOT
python3 1_filtrage_tj.py
python3 2_parsing_tj_v2.py
cd ..
python3 generate_cot_optimized.py --max-samples 5000 --output jurisprudence_cot_v3_5k.jsonl

# 2. Prepare LegalKit
cd LegalKitPreparation
python3 prepare_legalkit_10k.py
cd ..

# 3. Merge with curriculum learning
python3 prepare_autotrain_dataset.py

Total Duration Estimate

  • —Filtering + Parsing: ~30 minutes
  • —COT Generation (5k): ~100 hours (M4 Pro local)
  • —LegalKit: ~5 minutes
  • —Merge: ~1 minute

Total: ~100 hours (primarily COT generation)


🎯 Expected Model Capabilities

After fine-tuning on this dataset, the model will be capable of:

Mode 1: Factual Response (LegalKit)

Input: "Quel est le délai de rétractation pour un achat en ligne ?"

Output: Direct answer with article citation (in French)

Mode 2: Legal Analysis (COT)

Input: "Mon employeur refuse de me payer mes heures supplémentaires. Que puis-je faire ?"

Output: Structured analysis in 4 sections (in French):

  1. 1.Situation juridique
  2. 2.Cadre juridique applicable
  3. 3.Analyse et conditions
  4. 4.Réponse et conseils

đź“§ Contact

Author: VinceGx33

Dataset URL: https://huggingface.co/datasets/VinceGx33/mistral-legal-french-dataset

Report an issue: Open an issue on the HuggingFace repository


⚖️ Disclaimer

This dataset is intended for educational and research purposes. Models fine-tuned on this dataset should not be used as a substitute for professional legal advice.

Important:

  • —⚠️ Generated responses may contain errors
  • —⚠️ Law evolves; verify with official sources
  • —⚠️ Consult a lawyer for personalized legal advice

Last updated: October 29, 2025