The sorted() function takes a key= parameter

newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=lambda d: d['name'])

Alternatively, you can use operator.itemgetter instead of defining the function yourself

from operator import itemgetter
newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=itemgetter('name'))

For completeness, add reverse=True to sort in descending order

newlist = sorted(list_to_be_sorted, key=itemgetter('name'), reverse=True)

You can use the key arg at sorted that gets a function to sort docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#sorted

sorted_lst = sorted(lst, key=lambda x: list(x.keys())[0])

You don't want to call sorted on your list, but on each dict of the list

Use .items() to get key-value pairs for each dict, and it'll sort them by the first element of the pair: the key. Set reverse to True to get "vid" before "name".

viri_assets = [{'vid': 'transpower_036', 'name': '221_02_PB_520_REF_174050'},
               {'vid': 'transpower_065', 'name': '222_05_KAL_T2E_YT_344991'},
               {'name': '226_02_INTL_PRSTR_ET_499802', 'vid': 'transpower_156'}]

viri_assets = [dict(sorted(d.items(), reverse=True)) for d in viri_assets]

print(viri_assets)

Output:

[{'vid': 'transpower_036', 'name': '221_02_PB_520_REF_174050'}, 
 {'vid': 'transpower_065', 'name': '222_05_KAL_T2E_YT_344991'}, 
 {'vid': 'transpower_156', 'name': '226_02_INTL_PRSTR_ET_499802'}]