The Complete Guide to Using AI as a Legal Professional in Viet Nam in 2025

For legal professionals in Viet Nam in 2025, AI is no longer a niche advisory topic but a frontline practice area: the country's evolving framework - from Decree No.13/2023 (aligned with GDPR principles) to the Draft Law on the Digital Technology Industry and the incoming personal data protection law - creates new compliance, contracting and IP work from labeling rules and a two‑year regulatory sandbox to R&D tax incentives and restricted uses.

Lawyers will need to map cross‑border data flows, advise on AI‑specific clauses and liability for automated decisions, and steer clients through mandatory transparency and consent rules flagged in the Draft PDP; the pace of investment (NVIDIA's Vietnam R&D push is a clear signal) means corporate demand for counsel on incentives and IP is rising fast.

Practical, non‑technical upskilling helps: legal teams can learn promptcraft and workplace AI use in Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work to translate technical risk into enforceable contractual protections and policies (see Vietnam's AI overview for regulators and market context).

Vietnam Briefing - Vietnam AI sector regulatory frameworks and opportunities (2025) · Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp

“Vietnam has many advantages, of which the biggest “superpower” is family values ​​and respect for education. Vietnamese people excel in STEM fields, especially math and science. This makes Vietnam the second-largest supplier of software engineers in the world – a fact that few people know about. With this potential, we believe that Vietnam is an ideal place for NVIDIA to develop R&D centers and build a strong AI ecosystem here.” – Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.

Regulatory momentum in 2025 turns AI from a compliance afterthought into a core practice area for Vietnam's legal teams: the National Assembly's June 14, 2025 Law on Digital Technology Industry sets out AI governance principles, risk‑based classifications, licensing for high‑risk uses and generous R&D and tax incentives that will take effect on 1 January 2026, while existing instruments like Decree No.13/2023 and the coming personal data protection law create overlapping data‑protection duties and consent rules lawyers must map DFDL's summary of the Law on Digital Technology Industry.

Practical rules already on the table include mandatory labeling of AI‑generated products, a two‑year regulatory sandbox for controlled testing, and explicit prohibitions on uses that harm personal decision‑making - a hybrid of “sandbox plus guardrail” that investors and counsel should digest before drafting clauses or blueprints for deployment Vietnam Briefing's roundup of AI regulatory measures.

This legal architecture reflects the National AI Strategy's twin goals of attracting investment and protecting rights, so expect dense implementing regulations and sectoral guidance; keeping an eye on the Draft PDP's timetable and the NIC's Project ViGen outputs will separate routine contract work from high‑stakes regulatory risk InvestVietnam policy context for AI and digital technology.

“Vietnam has many advantages, of which the biggest “superpower” is family values ​​and respect for education. Vietnamese people excel in STEM fields, especially math and science. This makes Vietnam the second-largest supplier of software engineers in the world – a fact that few people know about. With this potential, we believe that Vietnam is an ideal place for NVIDIA to develop R&D centers and build a strong AI ecosystem here.” – Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.

Data protection sits at the heart of any AI R&D project in Viet Nam: since Decree No.13/2023 introduced GDPR‑like guardrails, the new Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) elevates those rules and adds clearer extraterritorial reach, tougher sanctioning and a series of procedural requirements that directly affect model training, data sharing and cross‑border tests.

Legal teams advising AI projects must treat consent as the default legal basis (explicit, verifiable and purpose‑specific), build DPIA and Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA) processes into project kickoffs and be ready to file those assessments within 60 days of processing or transfer, because Vietnam's authorities (notably the MPS and its A05 cyber unit) expect documentation on demand; breach handling is also fast‑paced - a 72‑hour notification window that can feel like a sprint once incidents hit production.

Data localization triggers remain for specified services, the Data Law and sector rules will define “important” and “core” datasets, and the PDPL introduces startup grace periods for some DPIA/DPO duties while preserving heavy penalties (including percentage‑of‑turnover fines for cross‑border breaches and large caps for illicit data trading).

Practical counsel will therefore map data flows early, bake consent and minimisation into training pipelines, and coordinate TIAs/DPIAs with regulators - see DLA Piper's Vietnam data protection overview and DFDL's briefing on the PDPL for operational checklists and timelines.

The new Law on Digital Technology Industry makes risk classification, mandatory labeling and a formal sandbox integral to Vietnam's AI regime: AI systems will be sorted into high‑risk, high‑impact and non‑high‑risk categories with government‑prescribed controls (so legal teams must map classification to contractual warranties, indemnities and pre‑deployment approvals), the Ministry of Science and Technology will publish lists and prescribed identification marks for AI‑generated digital products (think of a visible ID tag on a chatbot or generated image that signals automated origin), and a two‑year regulatory sandbox creates a controlled testing environment for pilots while regulators finalize sectoral rules and safeguards.

For counsel advising clients this means drafting labeling‑compliance clauses, negotiating sandbox terms (scope, monitoring, liability and exit conditions), and integrating human‑rights and impact‑assessment practices into pre‑launch risk reviews - a cadence that echoes international risk‑management guidance on mapping, measuring and managing harms.

Stay alert to the implementing decrees that will define which systems trigger heightened obligations and the practical mechanics of identification marks and sandbox access; primary summaries are available from Baker McKenzie and Lexology, and the U.S. Risk Management Profile offers useful, rights‑focused risk management methods that align with Vietnam's lifecycle approach to AI oversight.

Baker McKenzie overview of Vietnam Digital Technology Industry Law · Lexology analysis of key AI updates in Vietnam · U.S. Risk Management Profile for AI and Human Rights (USG/NIST)

Intellectual property law in Viet Nam still tilts toward a human‑authorship model, so AI‑created outputs sit in a legal fog that makes contracting the frontline defence: current IP rules require a work to be

“created by a human”,

AI cannot be a legal author, and disputes over originality, training data and liability routinely raise who - the programmer, prompt engineer, platform operator or data provider - actually owns or is liable for a work; see the detailed survey of gaps in Vietnam's approach at Chambers analysis of Vietnam AI IP gaps and the Saigon Times article on AI authorship in Vietnam.

Practical contracting must therefore do the heavy lifting: carve out clear ownership and licence language, require express warranties and provenance for training data, assign indemnities for third‑party copyright claims, and build human‑oversight or co‑authorship thresholds into deliverables so a buyer can trace the human creative contribution that the law still demands.

Lessons from international flashpoints - from the DABUS inventorship fights to generative examples like

“The Next Rembrandt”

- show that courts and offices will look for human skill and direction, not just code, so include audit rights, source‑data covenants and exit provisions in vendor and SaaS agreements.

For foreign buyers and exporters using Vietnamese suppliers, practical playbooks and risk checklists are available in market briefings, notably the Lexology roundup for foreign businesses on AI contracting in Vietnam, and counsel should flag contractual workarounds - trade‑secret protection, trademark registrations and bespoke assignment clauses - while watching for statutory reform that may redefine authorship and liability.

Compliance in Viet Nam has become high‑stakes: the new Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) - effective 1 Jan 2026 - layers explicit consent rules, mandatory DPIA/TIA processes with a 60‑day submission window and a 72‑hour breach‑notification sprint onto an already crowded regulatory field, so legal teams must bake process, contract and incident playbooks into every AI project; practical steps include clear, purpose‑specific consent flows, documented DPIA/TIA workflows, written processor contracts with audit and deletion clauses, and technical safeguards such as encryption and access controls to meet inspection demands and localization triggers (see Kaamel PDPL alert on Vietnam personal data rules).

Enforcement exposure is real and varied: cross‑border transfer breaches can attract fines up to 5% of prior‑year revenue, buying or selling personal data can bring penalties of up to ten times illegal proceeds, and other PDPL breaches may carry fines up to VND 3 billion (≈USD 115,030), while consumer‑protection updates under Decree 24 have already raised administrative fines and tightened breach reporting timelines (see ConventusLaw report on Vietnam PDPL fines and cross‑border transfer penalties and EY Vietnam legal update (March 2025) on consumer information and breach reporting).

Don't overlook adjacent regimes: Decree 211 tightens licensing and sanctions for civil cryptography activities (fines and licensing delays can disrupt cloud, key‑management and import plans).

A concise risk playbook - map data flows, run DPIA/TIAs early, embed contractual warranties and indemnities, rehearse a 72‑hour response, and document decisions - converts regulatory threat into manageable legal work and preserves deployable AI value across borders; further operational checklists and timelines are available in the linked regulatory summaries.

When buyers, sellers and procurement teams tackle AI deals in Viet Nam they must graft AI‑specific checks onto familiar M&A workflows: start with Vietnam‑tailored legal, financial and IT diligence (licenses, change‑of‑control clauses, tax and labour records) using a Vietnam checklist as the baseline, then add model‑level scrutiny - provenance of training data, DPIA/TIA readiness, explainability limits and adversarial risks - so regulators and acquirers aren't surprised by a downstream compliance hole; see the practical Vietnam M&A checklist for legal teams at LTS Law for local priorities (LTS legal due diligence checklist for M&A in Vietnam).

Probe model behaviour and documentation aggressively (the “black box” and provenance problems matter) and apply a VerityAI‑style model due‑diligence framework to test robustness, drift and deployment security before signing; independent behavioural testing and clear SLAs limit post‑close exposure (VerityAI model due diligence framework).

Finally, weave IT and cyber controls into integration plans - Vietnam Briefing's IT due diligence notes on software, cybersecurity and ERP/CRM alignment show how operational gaps can erode value - and price remedies into reps, indemnities and escrow arrangements so a model's unseen risks don't become the buyer's bill (Vietnam Briefing on IT & commercial due diligence).

Treat an AI asset like a living system: if training‑data provenance looks like Swiss cheese, budget to plug the holes before close.

Sectoral risk mapping in Viet Nam shows clear, actionable differences: in finance the immediate hazards are AML, fraud and explainability gaps - banks must marry strong KYC/transaction monitoring with explainable models and behavioural biometrics to meet SBV rules and blunt deepfake/spoofing attacks (see Tookitaki Vietnam AML best practices and Feedzai behavioral biometrics guidance for Vietnam banks); in healthcare the PDPL and Draft DTI regime push strict consent, DPIA/TIA processes and tight cross‑border safeguards around patient data, so medical AI pilots need data minimisation, formal R&D consent flows and on‑premises or hybrid deployments to preserve confidentiality; in employment and public services the biggest exposures are automated decision‑making, discrimination and transparency failures, so human‑in‑the‑loop controls, audit trails and mandatory identification marks for AI‑generated outputs help satisfy the Draft DTI's transparency and ethics aims (see Lexology Vietnam AI regulatory update).

Practical controls across sectors converge: run DPIAs/TIAs early, require explainable‑by‑design models for high‑risk uses, embed rapid breach playbooks and vendor provenance warranties, and treat model training datasets like regulated assets - because in Vietnam a single unexplained automated decision can trigger regulatory scrutiny and reputational fallout as fast as a fraud alert in a retail bank.

Corporate boards and in-house counsel in Viet Nam should treat AI governance as a board‑level risk - not a tech project - with clear accountability, a centralized inventory of AI systems and a lifecycle playbook that ties together DPIAs, human‑in‑the‑loop controls, incident drills and vendor provenance clauses; practical playbooks from global firms stress formal AI committees, periodic risk ratings and explainability SLAs as the backbone of internal control frameworks (GAN Integrity AI governance best practices, Freshfields AI governance framework guidance).

Vietnam's incoming Digital Technology Industry incentives - R&D tax deductions, PIT exemptions for specialists and a two‑year regulatory sandbox - make talent attraction and retention paramount, so link hiring packages to compliance KPIs and training quotas and use the sandbox as a two‑year runway for supervised pilots that test controls before scale (Vietnam Briefing 2025 AI sector incentives and regulatory sandbox).

Operationalise governance with role‑based training, red‑teaming/assurance cycles, a living risk register and board reporting rhythms so that AI moves from experimental to enterprise-grade without exposing the firm to the rapid penalties and reputational shocks now shaping Vietnam's AI landscape.

“And compliance officers should take note. When our prosecutors assess a company's compliance program - as they do in all corporate resolutions - they consider how well the program mitigates the company's most significant risks. And for a growing number of businesses, that now includes the risk of misusing AI. That's why, going forward and wherever applicable, our prosecutors will assess a company's ability to manage AI-related risks as part of its overall compliance efforts.”

As the year closes, legal teams in Viet Nam should lock the calendar and move from awareness to action: the National Assembly passed the Law on Digital Technology Industry on June 14, 2025 (with several provisions effective from July 1, 2025 and full effect on January 1, 2026), and the Draft Personal Data Protection bill is on a fast track with final review and expected enactment in 2025 - so prioritise three things now: (1) monitor implementing decrees that will spell out risk classes, labeling rules and sandbox entry criteria (they'll turn high‑level obligations into contractually actionable duties), (2) bake DPIA/TIA workflows, cross‑border transfer maps and labeling/compliance clauses into live projects so deployments aren't caught flat-footed, and (3) scan incentive windows and talent rules so clients can pair compliance with tax/R&D and workforce advantages; practical summaries from Vietnam Briefing and Baker McKenzie are essential reading for statutory timing and implementation guidance, and non‑technical upskilling (for example, Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp) helps counsel translate technical risk into enforceable contract and policy language.

Treat the two‑year regulatory sandbox as a runway - use it to test human‑in‑the‑loop controls and evidence your compliance story before full commercial scale.

“Vietnam has many advantages, of which the biggest “superpower” is family values ​​and respect for education. Vietnamese people excel in STEM fields, especially math and science. This makes Vietnam the second-largest supplier of software engineers in the world – a fact that few people know about. With this potential, we believe that Vietnam is an ideal place for NVIDIA to develop R&D centers and build a strong AI ecosystem here.” – Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.