openapi: 3.1.0
info:
  title: vLex Iceberg Legal Research API
  description: >-
    The vLex Iceberg Legal Research API provides AI-powered access to legal
    documents, case law, statutes, and regulations from global jurisdictions.
    Capabilities include semantic document search, AI classification, key
    phrase extraction, and citation detection (vCite). The corpus spans 100+
    million documents from 2,000+ multilingual sources.
  version: 1.0.0
  contact:
    name: vLex Developer Support
    url: https://developer.vlex.com/
  license:
    name: Proprietary
    url: https://vlex.com/
externalDocs:
  description: vLex Developer Portal
  url: https://developer.vlex.com/apis
servers:
  - url: https://api.vlex.com
    description: vLex Iceberg Legal Research API
tags:
  - name: Search
    description: Search the vLex legal document corpus
  - name: Documents
    description: Retrieve individual legal documents
  - name: Classification
    description: Classify legal documents and extract key phrases
  - name: Citations
    description: Detect and resolve legal citations (vCite)
paths:
  /v1/search:
    post:
      operationId: searchDocuments
      summary: Search Legal Documents
      description: >-
        Perform a semantic search across the vLex corpus of 100+ million legal
        documents. Supports natural language queries with jurisdiction, document
        type, and date filters. Returns ranked results with document metadata.
      tags:
        - Search
      security:
        - SubscriptionKey: []
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchRequest'
            examples:
              caseSearch:
                summary: Search for employment discrimination cases
                value:
                  query: "employment discrimination hostile work environment"
                  jurisdiction: "US"
                  document_type: "case_law"
                  date_from: "2020-01-01"
                  page: 1
                  per_page: 10
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Search results
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchResponse'
        '400':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/BadRequest'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
  /v1/documents/{document_id}:
    get:
      operationId: getDocument
      summary: Get Legal Document
      description: Retrieve a specific legal document by its vLex ID, including full text, metadata, and citation data.
      tags:
        - Documents
      security:
        - SubscriptionKey: []
      parameters:
        - name: document_id
          in: path
          required: true
          schema:
            type: string
          description: vLex document identifier
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Legal document
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/LegalDocument'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
        '404':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/NotFound'
  /v1/classify:
    post:
      operationId: classifyDocument
      summary: Classify Legal Document
      description: >-
        Classify a legal text into practice areas, document types, and extract
        key legal phrases. Uses IceNet, vLex's legal classification algorithm
        trained on millions of legal documents.
      tags:
        - Classification
      security:
        - SubscriptionKey: []
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/ClassifyRequest'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Classification results
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/ClassifyResponse'
        '400':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/BadRequest'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
  /v1/key-phrases:
    post:
      operationId: extractKeyPhrases
      summary: Extract Key Phrases
      description: >-
        Extract significant legal key phrases, terms of art, and important
        concepts from a legal text. Returns ranked phrases with context.
      tags:
        - Classification
      security:
        - SubscriptionKey: []
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/KeyPhrasesRequest'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Key phrases
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/KeyPhrasesResponse'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
  /v1/citations:
    post:
      operationId: detectCitations
      summary: Detect Legal Citations
      description: >-
        Detect and parse legal citations from text using vLex's vCite algorithm.
        Supports citation formats from 20+ jurisdictions. Returns structured
        citation data with links to referenced documents where available.
      tags:
        - Citations
      security:
        - SubscriptionKey: []
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/CitationRequest'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Detected citations
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/CitationResponse'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
components:
  securitySchemes:
    SubscriptionKey:
      type: apiKey
      in: header
      name: Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key
      description: vLex API subscription key from the developer portal.
  schemas:
    SearchRequest:
      type: object
      required:
        - query
      description: Request body for legal document search.
      properties:
        query:
          type: string
          description: Natural language or keyword search query.
        jurisdiction:
          type: string
          description: ISO 3166-1 country code or jurisdiction code (e.g. US, GB, EU).
          example: US
        document_type:
          type: string
          enum:
            - case_law
            - statute
            - regulation
            - secondary_source
            - contract
            - all
          default: all
        date_from:
          type: string
          format: date
          description: Filter documents published on or after this date.
        date_to:
          type: string
          format: date
          description: Filter documents published on or before this date.
        language:
          type: string
          description: BCP-47 language filter.
          example: en
        page:
          type: integer
          default: 1
        per_page:
          type: integer
          default: 10
          maximum: 50
    SearchResponse:
      type: object
      properties:
        results:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchResult'
        total:
          type: integer
        page:
          type: integer
        per_page:
          type: integer
        query_time_ms:
          type: integer
    SearchResult:
      type: object
      properties:
        document_id:
          type: string
          description: vLex document identifier.
        title:
          type: string
          description: Document title.
        snippet:
          type: string
          description: Relevant text excerpt matching the query.
        document_type:
          type: string
          description: Type of legal document.
        jurisdiction:
          type: string
        date:
          type: string
          format: date
        relevance_score:
          type: number
          format: float
        url:
          type: string
          format: uri
    LegalDocument:
      type: object
      description: A full legal document from the vLex corpus.
      properties:
        id:
          type: string
        title:
          type: string
        document_type:
          type: string
        jurisdiction:
          type: string
        date:
          type: string
          format: date
        language:
          type: string
        full_text:
          type: string
          description: Full text of the legal document.
        metadata:
          type: object
          description: Additional document metadata (court, parties, docket number, etc.).
          additionalProperties: true
        citations:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Citation'
        url:
          type: string
          format: uri
    ClassifyRequest:
      type: object
      required:
        - text
      properties:
        text:
          type: string
          description: Legal text to classify.
          minLength: 50
          maxLength: 100000
        language:
          type: string
          default: en
    ClassifyResponse:
      type: object
      properties:
        practice_areas:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Classification'
          description: Detected legal practice areas.
        document_type:
          $ref: '#/components/schemas/Classification'
        key_concepts:
          type: array
          items:
            type: string
          description: Key legal concepts identified.
    Classification:
      type: object
      properties:
        label:
          type: string
        confidence:
          type: number
          format: float
          minimum: 0
          maximum: 1
    KeyPhrasesRequest:
      type: object
      required:
        - text
      properties:
        text:
          type: string
          minLength: 50
          maxLength: 100000
        max_phrases:
          type: integer
          default: 20
          maximum: 100
        language:
          type: string
          default: en
    KeyPhrasesResponse:
      type: object
      properties:
        key_phrases:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/KeyPhrase'
        processing_time_ms:
          type: integer
    KeyPhrase:
      type: object
      properties:
        phrase:
          type: string
        score:
          type: number
          format: float
        occurrences:
          type: integer
    CitationRequest:
      type: object
      required:
        - text
      properties:
        text:
          type: string
          description: Legal text containing citations to detect.
        jurisdiction:
          type: string
          description: Primary jurisdiction for citation parsing (helps with ambiguous formats).
    CitationResponse:
      type: object
      properties:
        citations:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Citation'
        citation_count:
          type: integer
    Citation:
      type: object
      description: A detected legal citation.
      properties:
        raw_text:
          type: string
          description: Citation text as found in the document.
          example: "347 U.S. 483 (1954)"
        document_id:
          type: string
          description: vLex ID of the referenced document, if resolved.
        citation_type:
          type: string
          description: Type of citation (case, statute, regulation, etc.).
        jurisdiction:
          type: string
        year:
          type: integer
        start_offset:
          type: integer
        end_offset:
          type: integer
        url:
          type: string
          format: uri
          description: Link to the cited document on vlex.com.
    Error:
      type: object
      properties:
        error:
          type: string
        message:
          type: string
  responses:
    BadRequest:
      description: Invalid request
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'
    Unauthorized:
      description: Invalid or missing subscription key
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'
    NotFound:
      description: Document not found
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'