Fields

Provides documentation and guidance on how fields can be used in the Public API

The following sections on this page document and describe how you can work with the fields on a Matter or Contract.

What are fields?

Fields represent the custom data that users can add to Matters and Contracts based on their type (Matter Type or Contract Type).

There are two types of fields; LawVu fields and custom fields. LawVu fields are available by default in a new LawVu environment, while custom fields are created by organization administrators for use by your organization.

More information about fields can be found on the help site

How to use fields in the LawVu API

Matters and Contracts expose a fields property which contains a key/value pair of the fields that are currently available on the Matter Type or Contract Type that the Matter or Contract is currently for.

When interacting with a given field, you can reference the field by the Field API Name, and provide a value for it in the correct shape for the given field type. This is supported for both creating, and updating fields.

Field API Names

Field API Names are a specific identifier that can be set by a user against a field via the LawVu website so that you can control how you reference fields and allow for these references to be consistent between sandbox and production environments.

To find out more about how to set a field API name, refer to the help page

Field values

Field values can be one of a select list of type which each represent a different structure for their result. The list of types are:

• Text
• Decimal
• Boolean
• Date
• Option
• Multi Option
• User

Text

Represents any text string, both single line and multi line.

"fields": {
    "my_text_field": "my text value",
}

Decimal

Represents any number based value. Supporting integers, double, floats and decimals.

"fields": {
    "my_decimal_field": 78659.84,
}

Boolean

Represents any boolean value.

"fields": {
    "my_boolean_field": true,
}

Date

Represents a date value. The only accepted time portion is midnight. Any other times are not supported

"fields": {
    "my_date_field": "2025-05-06",
    "my_date_midnight_field": "2025-05-06T00:00:00",
}

Option

Represents a single selection option which aligns with a pick list of predefined values. e.g. A dropdown

"fields": {
    "my_option_field": {
      "label": "Option 1",
      "value": "option_1"
    },
}

Multi Option

Represents multiple selected options which align with a pick list of predefined values. e.g. A checkbox list

"fields": {
    "my_multioption_field": [
      {
        "label": "Option A",
        "value": "option_a"
      },
      {
        "label": "Option D",
        "value": "option_d"
      }
    ],
}

User

Represents a user account in LawVu.

"fields": {
    "my_user_field": {
      "email": "api.developer@lawvu.com",
      "firstName": "Api",
      "id": "f0f1e06e-3005-4093-af7f-1934d55617e1",
      "lastName": "Developer",
      "organizationId": 8134
    }
}

How the field types in the API map to the LawVu application

The types available in the API may be different to what you might be used to in the LawVu application so below is a helpful table helping map between the two for the different types of fields

Custom fields: