We're pleased to announce the latest release of Access Legal Case Management, Version 2.16.1

This update includes various enhancements and bug fixes detailed below. A PDF copy of the release notes can also be found here.

Previously, when using "Reply to All" on an email from the Diary or File History view, the original sender was incorrectly included as a recipient. This inconsistency with standard email behaviour (as seen in Outlook and the ALCM Mail page) could result in unintended duplicate recipients.

This has been resolved. The sender is now correctly excluded from the recipient list when using "Reply to All" from the Diary and File History view, consistent with expected behaviour across the application.

Archived profit cost nominal codes are no longer available for selection during the bill request process.

Previously, selecting an archived nominal could result in transactions being incorrectly posted to that archived code in the ledger.

The nominal code dropdown now displays only active nominal codes, ensuring accurate ledger postings.

When entering a First Name and Last Name in rapid succession on the client creation screen, the Last Name would sometimes fail to populate in the Letter Title, Contact Name, and Client Name fields. This was caused by a race condition where tabbing away from a field before it had finished processing would result in incomplete or missing data.

A race condition on the client creation screen has been resolved. Client name fields — including Letter Title, Contact Name, and Client Name — now correctly populate when First Name and Last Name are entered quickly, ensuring data is captured accurately regardless of typing speed.

An issue where, when EmailSubjectRef was configured to 2, the DPS code was not appearing at the end of the email subject line as expected has been resolved.

The subject line will now follow the correct format:

[Note text] [Matter details] [DPS code]

The Mail Widget on the dashboard now stays up to date without requiring a manual page refresh. The widget will automatically refresh every 5 minutes to reflect the latest email data, including accurate read/unread statuses and email counts.

A manual refresh button has also been added for on-demand updates.

The ALCM Mail inbox now refreshes automatically every 3 minutes (reduced from 5 minutes), reducing delays in new emails appearing. The Mail Widget has also been fixed to correctly update the unread email count and unread email list on each refresh cycle.

For immediate updates, right-click on the Email Inbox and select Refresh Item, or use the new manual refresh option on the Mail Widget.

Previously, when a bill was rejected and the original requester was not configured as a Fee Earner, the resulting task was not displayed on the Tasks screen when filtered to "All Departments." Supervisors had no visibility of these tasks unless they searched for the specific user individually.

This has been resolved. The All Departments Tasks screen now correctly displays tasks for all active users, regardless of their Fee Earner status, ensuring supervisors have full visibility of all outstanding tasks including rejected bill notifications.

Previously, spell checker and grammar settings configured in the email composer would reset to their defaults each time a new compose window was opened. This was caused by a problem within the email composer preventing user preferences from being saved to browser storage.

Settings have now been corrected to persist across sessions, so users no longer need to reconfigure their preferences each time they compose an email.

Resolved an issue in the email composer where highlighting copy-pasted or existing text could unintentionally alter the font size.

Text formatting will now remain consistent when selecting content, ensuring emails retain their intended appearance.

Previously, users would intermittently see a "You don't have permission to perform this action." error while replying to or forwarding emails within a case. This error was misleading — it was triggered by a background email sync process, not by the user's own action.

The background sync now handles these transient permission responses silently. Replying, forwarding, and sending emails are unaffected and continue to work as expected.

Previously, when editing the Note field on an existing Proceedings Class time entry, any text typed would automatically revert to the previously saved content while the user was still typing. This made it impossible to update notes on existing Proceedings Class time entries.

This was caused by a typo in the rate-calculation logic within the Proceedings components, which triggered an infinite recalculation loop whenever the attendance and prep time fields held different values — continuously resetting the Note field as a side effect.

The typo has been corrected. Users can now type and save updated notes on existing Proceedings Class time entries as expected.

When sharing a document as an email attachment from file history, the document name was incorrectly appearing in the email subject line, requiring users to manually remove it. The subject line will now only display the case reference, as expected.

Previously, when a client was created from an opportunity, their address details (Address Line 1, Address Line 2, Town, County, and Postcode) were not carried through to the client screen. This caused mail merge fields to appear blank when generating documents.

This has been resolved. Client address and company details are now correctly populated when a new contact is created from an opportunity, ensuring document generation works as expected.

When posting a CCR (Client Receipt) eChit using the Case dropdown shortcut, users could encounter a 500 error if the Payment Type field contained more than 40 characters.

This has been resolved by applying a 40-character limit to the Payment Type and related Reference fields in the eChit form, ensuring consistent validation on both the frontend and backend. eChits can now be posted successfully via the Case shortcut regardless of the Payment Type entry length.

Previously, if a user selected an address from the autocomplete dropdown in the Opportunities section a second time, the full formatted address (including city and country, e.g., "London, UK") was incorrectly appended to Address Line 1.

This has been fixed — Address Line 1 now correctly displays only the street address, regardless of how many times an address is selected or reselected.

Previously, users sending emails from within ALCM (including replies from the matter file history) would intermittently see a "Leave site? Changes you made may not be saved" browser dialog, even though the email was in the process of being sent. In some cases, this was followed by a second message confirming the email had sent but that the case history entry had not been recorded.

The "Leave site?" warning is a browser-level safeguard designed to protect unsaved email drafts — it should only appear if a user manually closes the compose window without sending or saving. Due to a timing issue, the warning was not being cleared before the window attempted to close on send, causing the browser to incorrectly treat an in-progress send as an unsaved change.

The send flow has been updated so that the unsaved-changes warning is dismissed the moment the Send button is clicked. If the window cannot close immediately because the send is still in progress, it will now close automatically once sending completes — ensuring users no longer see the spurious prompt.

An issue where email draft body content was intermittently lost — partially or in full — when saving drafts has been resolved. This affected approximately 80% of draft save operations.

Draft saving now uses a two-stage process: content is preserved in the background while you type, and a complete draft is saved when you click away from the editor. As a result, drafts may take a moment to appear fully in the Drafts folder — refreshing the folder after a short wait will display the complete draft correctly.

An issue has been resolved where email templates containing both Send Email [SE] and Forward Event [FE] commands were failing to create the associated task. While the email was sent successfully, the task creation triggered by the [FE] command was silently failing.

Tasks will now be created as expected when running email templates that combine both commands.

Resolved an issue where attempting to request a bill on certain matters resulted in a 500 server error. This was caused by a missing null check in the billing logic, which has now been corrected.

We hope you find this release valuable, if you have any questions or feedback please do not hesitate to reach out to our teams.