The monoclinic vanadate Nd:LaVO(4) crystal was characterized, including the first investigation of thermal properties and anisotropic laser performance to our knowledge. The thermal properties behave anisotropically with the highest thermal conductivity of 3.27 W/m/K along the c* direction. With a laser diode as the pump source, the efficient continuous-wave (cw) and passively Q-switched monoclinic Nd:LaVO(4) crystal lasers were realized, which resulted in the nearly isotropic maximum output power and laser wavelength. The maximum cw output power is 3.56 W with a slope efficiency of 41.4%, and the passively Q-switched pulse width is 10.9 ns with pulse energy of 38.3 μJ. Based on the laser results, the thermal shock parameter anisotropy is calculated to be 1:1.28. The results show that, in contrast to other vanadate crystals, Nd:LaVO(4) is a novel laser material with low symmetry.