We're pleased to announce the latest release of Access Legal Case Management, Version 2.16.4.

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

What's New

We are pleased to announce that LGFS Unused Materials fee functionality is now available in Access Legal Case Management (ALCM).

This feature brings ALCM in line with the equivalent functionality previously available in OneOffice, allowing fee earners working on LGFS (Litigators' Graduated Fee Scheme) matters to record and claim unused materials fees directly within ALCM.

Who Is Affected

Users managing Crown Court criminal legal aid matters billed under the LGFS.

What This Means for You

You can now record unused materials as part of your LGFS billing workflow within ALCM, without needing to rely on a separate system. This ensures your claims to the Legal Aid Agency accurately reflect the unused materials element of your fees.

Previously, carriage returns in MyLegalSpace notes were incorrectly displayed as 
 when viewed by clients. This has been resolved — notes will no longer show these characters.

Please note that line breaks are currently displayed as a single continuous line of text, which may be improved in a future update.

Corrected a spelling error on the Ledger Card where the column label displayed "Client CRETIT" instead of "Client CREDIT".

This occurred only when DDA columns were visible, balance-only mode was disabled, and the URN column was hidden. The label now displays correctly in all configurations.

When replying to an email from within a matter, the DPS tag could display an incorrect matter reference in the recipient's view. This occurred because the reply inherited the conversation thread from the original email, which may have been associated with a different matter. The tag would later correct itself automatically.

Replies to emails now correctly use the matter reference from the current matter, regardless of the original email's conversation thread.

Previously, when recording hearing dates in the Fixed Asset Schedule (FAS) screen, the calendar prevented users from selecting the case open date itself — only dates from the following day onwards were available. This has been corrected; users can now select a hearing date on the same day the case was opened.

As part of this fix, the close button on the Family – Private Class and Time Recording popup has also been resolved.

Resolved an issue where clients with only closed matters were not appearing in client search results. This was caused by a recent change to how matter counts were calculated — closed matters were excluded from the count, which prevented the system from loading any matters for those clients. Clients with exclusively closed matters will now display correctly in search results, with their matters visible as expected.