We're pleased to announce the latest release of Access Legal Case Management, Version 2.16.5.

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

When running an email body template from a case, additional blank lines were being inserted between paragraphs, causing the generated email to display double spacing where only a single line break existed in the original template. The template's intended formatting and style were not being preserved.

This has been resolved. Email templates will now render with the correct spacing, maintaining the layout as designed without inserting extra line breaks between paragraphs.

Previously, when creating a crime case using the INVB (Police Station Telephone Advice) case type, the fixed fee of £38.09 (inc. VAT) failed to appear in the Case Class Management screen, the Class Total (Fixed) field, the CRM11 form— even though profit costs were calculated correctly.

This has now been resolved. The fixed fee will populate correctly across all relevant screens and reports when using the INVB case type.

The rates file for Investigations time has also been updated to display the figures correctly.

When recording time for LGFS cases using Attendance Type CC-2 (Crown Court Hearing), three travel disbursement fields were missing from the Time Information screen, despite being available in OneOffice desktop:

These fields have now been added to the Disbursements section, bringing ALCM in line with OneOffice desktop. Values entered in these fields will contribute to the total disbursement value as expected.

When viewing matters for a client in the client search grid, the total record count was incorrect — only active matters were included in the total, rather than all matters associated with the client. This caused pagination to malfunction, meaning not all matter records were accessible or visible to the user. The correct total was visible on the client creation screen, but inconsistently reflected in the search grid.

The total matter count in the client search grid now correctly includes all matters, not just active ones. Pagination is driven by this accurate total, ensuring all matter records associated with a client are accessible and displayed correctly.

Resolved two issues affecting the MA Certificated Case Summary:

Previously, when saving Word document templates through the ALCM workflow to file history, content from the top of page 2 could shift onto page 1, causing unexpected pagination and layout changes that affected the appearance of client-facing documents.

The PDF rendering path has been improved to better preserve document formatting when saving through the workflow. Please note that some minor formatting differences may still appear when documents are viewed or edited in Word Online, as this is a known platform limitation of Word Online compared to Word Desktop — it is not possible to fully replicate desktop-level page break precision within the Word Online rendering engine.

Recommendation: For documents where precise formatting is critical, we recommend reviewing and finalising templates using Word Desktop before saving through the workflow.

Previously, dragging an email (.msg or .eml) directly from Microsoft Outlook or the ALCM Mail section into a case file history could silently add the same email more than once, with no duplicate warning displayed. This was inconsistent with the "Attach to File" button and Outlook Add-in, both of which already performed duplicate checks.

A best-effort duplicate check has now been added to the drag-and-drop filing workflow. ALCM will warn users when a potentially duplicate email is detected. Due to the nature of how dragged files are processed, this check may not catch every case, but will flag duplicates in the majority of scenarios.