Email now enters the case file, and routine filings draft themselves

This release adds a complete extension to the firm. A firm's email tends to sit apart from everything else: it arrives in a separate program, every reply gets written from scratch, and nothing sent stays tied to a case file unless someone remembers to file it there by hand.

Communications connects the firm's email over IMAP and SMTP, using your own server's details, and logs every message in and out in a register, with its date and the case file it belongs to. From there it also drafts the routine filings you write most often, with what the case file already has numbered in front of it.

The register does not depend on the subscription staying open

Communications is an in-and-out log, not a way to browse paperwork: that job still belongs to the client screen. It answers two questions: what has come in, and what needs a reply. You can still see everything it has logged, and still export it in full, even if you cancel the extension: a register with evidential value that disappears because a subscription lapsed is worth nothing in front of a judge.

Six routine filings, and none of them unchecked

JUDLEX drafts the acknowledgement of receipt, the submission of documents, the request for a copy of the case file, entering an appearance, the formal prior demand, and ordinary correspondence: the six that state what has already been decided, never the ones that decide something. It names the annexes, each document already numbered inside the case file, by their code, and it refuses the substantive filings. A claim, an appeal or a defence decide which grounds to argue and which to give up, and that is still the lawyer's work.

Before it lets you save a draft, JUDLEX checks every figure, date and claim it makes against what the case file has already confirmed; if something is not on record, it will not save the draft, and tells you what is missing. Drafting, saving and sending are three separate steps: drafting uses the extension, saving can be blocked if something does not add up, and sending leaves the computer for good.

A usage summary, if you want one

You can also turn on an anonymous usage summary to help JUDLEX fail less often: how often the application opened, which screens were visited, how many documents it processed, and what failed. Not a word about your case files travels with it: no client names, no titles, no dates from the matter, and the identifier attached to it is generated by your own computer, unrelated to your account or your licence. You can see exactly what would be sent before it goes, it stays off until you turn it on, and turning it off again clears what has been collected.

To switch on Communications, go to Profile → Licence, alongside the other extensions; you switch the usage summary on and off from Settings → Data and folders.