Matters Overview

Matter-native operator primitives for legal work.

Matters are the workspace primitive for legal work on Case.dev. A matter owns the operating context: metadata, its primary vault, work items, parties, audit logs, sharing, and execution policy.

Open API

All Services

CreatePOST /matters/v1

ExecutePOST /matters/v1//work-items

DecidePOST /matters/v1//work-items//decision

What a matter owns

• Primary vault linkage
• Work items and execution history
• Reusable parties and matter-specific roles
• Optional playbook (matter type) for agent instructions
• Audit logs, exports, events, and shares

Core resources

Resource	Endpoint family	Purpose
Matter	/matters/v1	Create, update, and inspect legal workspaces
Matter types	/matters/v1/types	Optional playbooks with agent instructions
Agent types	/matters/v1/agent-types	Reusable agent role definitions
Parties	/matters/v1/parties	Reusable people and organizations
Matter parties	/matters/v1/{id}/parties	Attach parties to a matter with roles
Work items	/matters/v1/{id}/work-items	Create and manage tasks — agents dispatch automatically
Decisions	/matters/v1/{id}/work-items/{workItemId}/decision	Approve, revise, block, or reassign work
Logs	/matters/v1/{id}/log	Operational history and exports
Shares	/matters/v1/{id}/shares	Cross-org matter access

How it works

The matters API is a task board. Create a work item, an agent picks it up automatically.

1. Create a work item → an agent starts immediately (fire and forget)
2. Agent completes → work item status moves to done (or blocked if it failed)
3. Agents can create more work items — they have full API access scoped to the matter
4. Humans or agents can decide — approve, revise (re-run), block, or reassign any work item

Work items support depends_on in metadata — a draft work item with dependencies won’t dispatch until all dependencies are done.

Quickstart

# Create a matter
curl https://api.case.dev/matters/v1 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Doe v. Example Corp.",
    "practice_area": "litigation"
  }'

# Create a work item — agent starts automatically
curl https://api.case.dev/matters/v1/$MATTER_ID/work-items \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Review demand letter",
    "type": "review",
    "instructions": "Check all citations and verify damages calculations against the medical records."
  }'

# Kick back with feedback
curl https://api.case.dev/matters/v1/$MATTER_ID/work-items/$WORK_ITEM_ID/decision \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "decision": "revise",
    "reason": "Citation on page 3 was overturned in 2024. Fix and resubmit."
  }'

The full schema and every tagged operation live in the API Reference.