Matters & clients

A matter is the central unit of legal and financial work in Efimis. Work items, disbursements, invoices, balances, documents, permissions, and key participants are organised around a matter.

The matter connects the party for whom the firm acts with the employees responsible for the work. It also establishes the billing, currency, ledger, and security context used by downstream transactions.

Identity and classification

Each matter has an Efimis ID such as matter_… and can also have a user-facing matter number. These identifiers serve different purposes: integrations should use the Efimis ID for API relationships and display the matter number to users.

Other identifying fields include:

• a short title describing the work;
• a matter type, which classifies the kind of legal work;
• a division, which places the matter in the firm’s organisational structure;
• opened, closed, and archived dates; and
• a document collection for matter-related files.

Matter types can be hierarchical. They are useful for defaults, reporting, and finding matters with comparable work, but they do not replace the matter’s own identifier or lifecycle.

Client and people

A matter can refer to several distinct participants:

Participant	Meaning
Client	The client role for the party on whose behalf the matter is opened.
Billing contact	The entity that should receive invoices or billing correspondence when different from the client.
Responsible person	The employee accountable for the matter.
Acting person	The employee carrying out or leading the legal work.
Assisting person	An employee assisting with the matter.
Introducer	The employee credited with introducing the work.

The public contract permits some of these fields to be absent while a matter is being established. Tenant configuration and business workflows may impose stronger requirements before the matter can become active or be used for billing.

The client role and underlying entity remain separate. clientId identifies the client record, while clientEntityId identifies the party described on the Entities & roles page.

Billing and currency context

A matter carries settings that influence how work is valued and billed. These can include the invoice template, fee and disbursement estimates, the number of minutes represented by a billing unit, and references to draft billing activity.

The matter can also nominate a transaction currency. Office-ledger entries retain a value in the firm’s base currency and can additionally carry the matter currency. Treat the exchange rate and currency supplied by Efimis as financial data: do not recompute historical amounts using a current spot rate.

Ledgers and balances

Every matter has an office-ledger context for transactions between the client and the firm. Depending on the tenant and jurisdiction, it can also have one or more client or trust ledgers for money the firm holds on behalf of the client.

The REST API exposes matter ledgers and account summaries separately from the matter record. This keeps identity and workflow fields distinct from calculated financial balances. A summary is a point-in-time read model; it should not be used as an instruction to create or reverse accounting transactions.

See Invoicing & ledger and Client & trust accounting for the two financial flows.

Permissions

Client-credentials tokens have tenant-wide access to all data, including every matter.

Public API integrations should treat client credentials as granting tenant-wide access and protect them accordingly.

Matter lifecycle

Matters move through six states:

State	Meaning
Draft	Initial setup is incomplete.
Active	Normal work and financial activity can proceed.
On hold	New activity may be restricted while the matter is held.
Closing	Closure has begun but outstanding conditions remain.
Closed	The matter is closed to normal new activity.
Archived	The closed matter has moved into long-term retention.

Closing is a business transition, not a simple field update. Outstanding work in progress, disbursements, invoices, payments, or ledger balances can prevent a matter from closing. Use the state-transition eligibility endpoint before requesting closure and report the returned reason to the operator.

Closing and archiving are also distinct. Closing ends operational work; archiving controls longer-term retention and presentation.

In the REST API

Matter endpoints support search, creation, retrieval, partial updates, deletion, summaries, ledgers, permissions, closure, and reactivation. The public API uses explicit action endpoints for lifecycle changes rather than asking clients to assign a state directly.

See the REST API reference for current schemas. Continue with Work items for the records that capture work performed against a matter.