LeanLaw Concepts

This page discusses some specific concepts in LeanLaw that are helpful to understand to use the API effectively.

Clients and Matters

Most things in LeanLaw revolve around clients and matters.

  • All matters are associated with exactly one client (and a client have zero or more matters)

  • All matters have exactly one responsible user assigned

  • One or more users are assigned to a matter. In some firms, all users are assigned to all matters, but in some cases they are only assigned to the ones they are working on.

Law firms may have ids associated with clients and/or matters that they use to identify them. These ids are referred to in the API as "reference". In LeanLaw's UI, they are called "Client ID" or "Matter ID". This should not be confused with the internal GUIDs used in the API. For example, here is JSON representing a matter in the system

{
"matterId": "f3888fb4-1ca8-ef11-8474-6045bd06f3a2",
"name": "Estate planning case",
"reference": "25-0912",
"clientId": "90bf16bc-fbfd-ef11-90cb-000d3a5d5137",
"client": {
"name": "Doe, John"
}
}

The internal LeanLaw ids (GUIDs) that are used by the API are seen as the `matterId` and `clientId` in the JSON object. The Matter ID as known by users of the firm is seen in the `reference` property as "25-0912". In this case, the firm has a reference on the matter, but not on the client. In some firms, there are references on both, and in other firms on neither.

Billable Items

Billable items are one of the following types, each with their own set of endpoints in the system:

  • Time entries

  • Expenses

  • Fixed Fees

Some things to be aware of with billable items:

  • They are always assigned a date

  • They have a description

  • They are associated with exactly one matter (and its client)

  • Time entries always has a user assigned; expenses and fixed fees optionally have a user