Release 21.12 - December 2021

Macy van der Hoek
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The December 2021 Legalsense update has version number 21.12 and includes the following changes:

Swedish language

Goda nyheter! The Legalsense web application is now available in the Swedish language. You can either request to have your default installation language changed to Swedish or change the language setting per user (user preferences).

eConnect

It is now possible in Legalsense to use electronic invoicing via eConnect. Electronic invoicing means that an invoice is created in Legalsense in XML format, then sent via the PEPPOL network, and then posted in the recipient's records.
If you would like to use eConnect, please notify the Legalsense support team so they can enable this functionality for you. Once the functionality is enabled you can configure eConnect. Instructions on how to do this can be found in the article eConnect.

Tags

In Legalsense, tags can now be added to clients, matters, and contacts. This feature allows you to create and use your own tags. These tags can then be searched and filtered in the overview pages of the clients, matters, and contacts. Tags can be created and removed both on the detail page and in the settings (‘Settings’ - ‘Lists’ - ‘Tags’).

Time

An additional column 'Amount' has been added under 'Time' - 'Search' which shows the (expected) amount of the time entries in your default currency.

Client/ Contacts/ Matters

  • When configuring rates for clients or matter all employees or functions of your firm were displayed. This caused the form to be very long for firms with many timekeepers or functions. With this release, you can choose to hide the fields by default and only display the adjusted rates for that client or matter. Under ‘Settings’ - ‘System’, you can specify the number of timekeepers or functions that should trigger the hiding of the rows on the form. The option ‘Add’ allows you to find another employee or function for which you wish to add an adjusted rate.
  • When you block time entry for a matter, you can add a comment to explain why the time entry is being blocked.
  • Archived contacts, clients, and matters can no longer be edited. The 'Edit' button is still visible, but only offers the possibility of editing the archiving date for contacts and clients, and a small number of archive fields for matters. In order to edit other data, the object must be unarchived.
  • Archived clients and contacts are now shown with their 'Archived on' date. This field is shown both in the archived lists and on the detail pages.
  • Three additional search filters are available for Contacts: 'Is client?', Is client contact person?' and 'Matter contact type'. ‘Is client’ shows contacts that are or are not Legalsense clients (depending on the chosen option). ‘Contact client’ shows contacts that are or are not linked to an organization that is a Legalsense client. ‘Matter contact type’ shows contacts with a specific role (contact type) on a matter. Please note that adding the role ‘client’ as a contact type does not mean that these contacts will show when looking for clients, and vice versa these clients will not show when using the ‘Is client?’ filter.
  • For firms that run a combined practice for lawyers and civil law notaries and that use ‘Chinese walls’ to separate these practices, there is an important change in how we handle the Chinese wall configuration on the matter level. Until now the Chinese wall type was derived from the practice group that was set on the matter. This has now been detached from the practice group. A new field ‘Chinese wall type’ has been added that can only be configured when creating a new matter. This field offers the options ‘Lawyer’, ‘Notary’ and ‘Both’. When ‘Both’ is selected, no Chinese wall will be applied to the matter. Whether a Legalsense user belongs to the notary or lawyer side of the firm, is still determined by the practice group of the user. For your current matters, there are no changes: all existing matters have been assigned a Chinese wall type based on the practice group on the matter.
  • When exporting contacts to Excel, a second option to export contacts with only their email addresses has been added.
  • In the 'Conflict check', the search on names is improved so that searching with separate parts of a name works better. For example, searching for 'B. van Veen' also produces results for 'B. van der Veen'.
  • The 'Conflict check' has been expanded to also search for users and creditors. For example, it also finds former employees of your office. For historical conflict data, new fields for ‘Client contacts’ and ‘Matter contacts’ have been added.
  • The archive fields for matters have been expanded with ‘check out requested on’, ‘Checked out by’ (user), and ‘check out notes’.
  • When archiving a matter, a retention period can be chosen. Different retention periods (in years) can be configured in Legalsense. The ‘end date’ for the retention period is calculated based on the chosen value. This date will be shown on the matter page and has been added to the Excel export of the archive list. Please contact Legalsense support, if you want to use this field.

AML

  • In the AML checklist for a matter, you can select 'Contact' as 'Representative Type' when adding or changing a representative.
  • An extra column 'Verified' has been added to the representatives, which you can use to indicate whether the authority of the representative has been verified.
  • When you add a UBO, the field 'UBO register consulted' is automatically set to 'Yes'.
  • When you add or change a UBO the field 'Country' is a mandatory field.
  • Under 'Settings' - 'System' the setting 'Transparency Register as document type' has been added. This makes it possible to hide the document type 'Proof of registration in the transparency register' if you turn it off.

Invoices

  • In the 'Advance overview' under 'Invoices' an extra column with 'Last advance date' has been added. You can filter the list of advances based on this field as well.
  • An additional search filter 'Matter practice group' has been added to the Invoice list ('Advanced search').
  • An additional search filter 'Matter practice group' has been added to the Debtor overview (‘Advanced search’).
  • An additional search filter 'Timekeeper' has been added to the Invoice list ('Advanced Search'). This allows you to search for invoices that contain time written by a specific timekeeper.
  • The email notification with a list of payments that can be sent from Legalsense under 'Invoices' - 'Payments' has been expanded to include a debtor column.

Reporting

  • A new reporting section for 'Rates' has been added. This section allows you to report on the rates set within your organization. There are several search filters available in this report. You also have the option to export the search results to Excel.
  • In the performance report, when you use the 'Grouping' field the selected grouping will be shown in bold in the overview.

Users / Security

  • The permissions to view clients, contacts, matters, and AML matters have been separated from the permissions to export this data to Excel. From now on it is possible to block the export action while the user is still able to view the data.
  • In the user overview, an extra column 'SSO' has been added. This allows you to immediately see which users are using Single Sign-on (SSO).
  • For linking a user found in Microsoft Azure with a Legalsense user, a ‘Bulk link’ function has been added. This function tries to match users automatically based on their email address. You can check these matches before confirming them.
  • When configuring a Single Sign-On provider (like Microsoft Azure AD), you can choose to ‘enforce login through SSO’. This will ensure that linked users can only access Legalsense using their SSO account. Active users that are not linked can still log in using their Legalsense account credentials.

Accounting software integration

The accounting number, currency, and amount in foreign currency have been added to the display of trust accounting transactions from Exact Financials.

Settings

  • Under 'Settings', integrations with external services are now collected in one submenu: 'Settings' - 'Integrations'. In the menu on the left, you will find all integrations that are available for your system such as Company.info, NetDocuments, etc.
  • Legalsense uses a ‘holiday calendar’ to calculate the number of workable days in your country. It is now possible to turn off this holiday calendar so that all workdays are included in the workable days. The workable days are used to determine targets per period.
  • The functionality to manage LEDES templates under ‘Settings’ can be made available with a new permit ‘manage_ledes’. If you would like to be able to manage LEDES templates, please contact the Legalsense support team.
  • For sending emails from Legalsense, the option to use the email service Flowmailer (https://flowmailer.com) has been added.

API

  • In the APIv2, the field 'billed_on_invoice_id' has been added in the Logline endpoint (Time entries).
  • In the APIv2, custom fields have been added to the Client endpoint.
  • The new ‘Chinese wall kind’ field that is mentioned above, has been added to the Matter endpoint for APIv1 and v2. For APIv1, the field is automatically set if it is not provided AND the matter has a practice group with a Chinese wall kind.

Audit log (separate add-on)

  • The audit log has been given a new ‘look and feel’.
  • The audit log table can be sorted by clicking on the column names.
  • A filter for date and time has been added to the audit log table.

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