Expression

An expression refers to either:

• A literal value, such as a number (e.g. 123) or a piece of text (e.g. "Hello world"); or
• A group of words or symbols that describes how to obtain the above (e.g. Contact.ShortName).

ContactsLaw allows the use of expressions in document templates, automatic descriptions for document types and workgroups, as well as various other areas. This is the basis for generating content that draws upon data from contacts, matters and so on.

Types of Expressions

Type	Example Expressions	Example Results	Remarks
Literal	123 "Hello world"	123 "Hello world"	To include double-quote characters inside a string literal, prefix with a backslash (i.e. \").
Asset	ContactMatterAddress		Assets do not produce any result directly, but can be used in conjunction with some functions, e.g. Count(Contact)might evaluate to 3 if the asset represented three parties on a matter.
Property	Contact.ShortNameContact.GenderMatter.CodeAddress.Country	"John Smith""Male""678-1""Australia"	Properties belong to assets. If an asset represents multiple contacts/matters/etc then the expression produces multiple results. Unless you specify otherwise, multiple results appear as a list of values, separated by commas (e.g. "John Smith, Fred Baker, Jane Doe").
Operator	+, -, *, / =, <>, <, >		Arithmetic operators compute numbers. Conditional operators produce either Yes or No.
Function	IsNotEmpty(Contact.LastName)Plural("word")If(Count(Contact) < 3, "friends", "acquaintances")	Yes"words""acquaintances"	Functions compute a result based on their arguments (inputs). Function calls can be nested within each other.
Constant	NewLineNewParagraph	"␊""␍"	Constant expressions provide a short-hand way of inserting frequently-used values, as well as text that cannot normally be entered directly (e.g. tab spaces).
Repetition	current.ShortNamecurrent.Countryindex	"John Smith""Australia"3	These expressions can only be used inside a repetition block, where they correspond to either the current instance of the repeated asset or a number indicating how many times the block has been repeated so far.