Asset

Assets are the mechanism through which expressions refer to resources within ContactsLaw. Each asset has a name (which distinguishes it from other assets) and a type (which determines the data that can be accessed through it).

Assets are also hierarchical, e.g. an address asset belongs to a particular contact asset. This avoids the need to separately specify how to obtain the address. Relationships between assets may be mandatory (e.g. between addresses and contacts) or optional (e.g. between contacts and matters).

Assets can resolve to multiple resources; for example, if a contact asset maps to a role on a matter, and there are 3 contacts in that role, then the asset will be resolved 3 times. Whenever an expression refers to an asset, it may yield zero, one or multiple values (functions are provided to deal with this). Mechanisms such as repetition blocks (in document templates) can be used to manage complex hierarchies of assets that resolve to multiple resources.