Release 21.04 - April

The Legalsense update of April 2021 has version number 21.04 and has the following changes:

Dashboard

A new graph is available for 'New matters'. This graph shows the number of new matters opened per month. The graph is available on the Firm dashboard, Practice group dashboard and Personal dashboard. The graph includes both the monthly number and the cumulative number. The data is for the current year and the previous year. The Firm dashboard shows all new matters. The Practice Group dashboard shows all new matters associated with the respective practice group. The Personal dashboard shows the new matters in the selected period if the user is the Matter Supervisor/Fee Earner. Please contact Legalsense support, if you would like to display this graph on your dashboards.

Notifications

There is a new notification available: 'Weekly billables overview email'. This notification can be set up for the Matter Supervisor and for the Billing Supervisor. Whenever there are billable items (work in progress, disbursements or outstanding advances) for the Supervisor, he/she will receive an e-mail with an overview of this work in progress. When the Matter Supervisor and the Billing Supervisor are the same user, only one notification is sent. By default, the email contains a hyperlink to the 'WIP overview' which is optionally available under 'Reports'.

Contacts / Clients / Matters

• When a matter was reopened of which the client had been archived, a blank pop-up screen appeared. From now on, a message appears explaining that the matter cannot be reopened because the client has been archived.
• The creation date of a contact has been added to the Contacts list and export. The contacts list can also be filtered (Advanced Search) on a date period.
• Custom fields of the type 'Dropdown box' contain an empty option, which is selected by default and is not a valid choice in the case of a ‘required’ (mandatory) field. This therefore forces a user to choose one of the options.
• The 'AML Matter Overview' is divided into multiple pages when more than 100 matters are shown in the list. At the bottom of the list there is a pagination that allows you to navigate to the next and previous page. This is similar to how the pagination works with, for example, the Matters list and Clients list.
• The AML checklist has been updated with the mandatory field 'UBO register consulted' with the choices 'Yes' and 'No'. This check must be performed before the AML check can be considered complete and is shown in the downloadable PDF file.
• The document types when adding documents to an AML matter have been extended with the option 'Evidence of registration in UBO register'.
• On the matter page, only advances were displayed under a separate overview 'Advances' if they had not yet been settled. The overview 'Advances' is now also displayed if there are no more unsettled advances. By clicking on 'Details' you can view all (settled) advances for this matter.
• A matter with invoices that were, fully or partially, marked as 'Uncollectable' could not be archived. It was indicated that there were still outstanding items on the matter. When checking whether a matter can be archived, invoices marked as uncollectable are no longer seen as 'blocking' for archiving.

Billing

• When editing an invoice, a new option 'Update fee amount' has been added. With this button, you can adjust the total fee amount for the invoice. The chosen amount is divided over all Fee-based (Activity) lines based on the weighing of the number of hours and the rate. It was already possible to adjust the total amount of a matter (section) on an invoice. This new option provides the possibility to make an adjustment for all matters on an invoice. So, it is especially useful when you have multiple matters on a single invoice.
• If after creating a draft invoice, the pricing list on the matter was changed and time entries were added afterwards, they were not added to the draft invoice. When you use 'Update section' or 'Update draft' for an invoice and the pricing list on the matter no longer matches the pricing list on the draft invoice, an explanatory message will appear.
• A system setting has been added that allows you to change the default choice for the 'Multiple matters' field. This field is available when creating invoices and is by default set to 'Create a separate invoice per matter'. With the new system setting you can change the default choice to 'Include all matters on a single invoice'. You can find this setting under 'Settings - General - System'.
• The export file of the Task overview (available in the billing workflow for the 'Financial admin' group) has been extended with the column 'Comment'.
• The Advance overview under 'Invoices' has a new search form where it is now also possible to search on 'matter'.

Integration with financial accounting software

• The Snelstart (accounting software) export file generated from Legalsense has been expanded and adapted to the new format. Due to an update of Snelstart, the earlier export file gave problems when importing.
• The integration with Fortnox (Swedish accounting software) offers the option to retrieve a PDF attachment of a purchase invoice when importing a disbursement to Legalsense. This allows this attachment to be added to the invoice.
• The Fortnox integration supports the ability to send disbursements and creditors created in Legalsense to Fortnox.

Miscellaneous

• In the security settings, the password strength 'none' has been removed. The lowest password strength is now 'weak'. You can change the password settings in the menu 'Settings - Security - Account settings'. Please note that if your password level was previously set to 'none', your password may no longer meet the minimum password strength requirement and you will be prompted to set a new password.
• It is possible to set how long passwords are valid for your Legalsense environment. Previously, you could only have this setting changed through Legalsense support. It is now possible to set this for your environment yourself as an administrator. Under 'Settings - Security - Account settings' you can set the number of days in the field 'Expire password after days*'.

API

• The field 'employee number' has been added to the Users endpoint (API v2).
• Endpoint "Matters" has been extended with the field 'soft kill status' in case of a 'submatter/product'. This field contains the values: 1 = active, 2 = archived, 3 = deleted. In case of a 'submatter/product' the API shows the following data: id of the 'submatter/product', the default value and whether the default value applies or a custom value (API v2).
• Endpoint "Matterdebtor" shows which email address has been used for the debtor (API v2).