On the legal advice front, the Act requires that an OC must not seek legal advice or the provision of other legal services or initiate legal action unless a resolution approving that action is passed at a General Meeting of the owners. There is an exemption if the reasonably anticipated cost is the lesser of $12500 or $1000 a lot.
So in your case with 32 lots if the reasonably anticipated costs are more than $12500 approval at a General Meeting has to be obtained. Note that the costs should be backed up by a fee proposal from the provider.
It seems the EC might not have done anything about getting approval for the legal costs? Even if they have not been to a GM there should have been notice of an EC meeting where they made the decision to retain legal advice, and for what purpose. That would include an estimate of the costs.
Note that if an EC doesn’t have time to get approval at a GM then they should get ratification of what they have done at a GM asap, to avoid risk of personal liability.
Re correspondence – a strata manager and/or the EC receive all sorts of correspondence, usually by way of email. I gave an example a while ago of an owner in our scheme who sent 150 ranting emails in a month. You say there have been emails going back and forward, which is what people do with emails – would you really expect to see them all?
There is no general requirement to table correspondence received. If it is substantive then as a matter of good practice and management you might expect to be notified, even if it were by way of general reference. But I think you need to be careful about what you table or disclose, particularly in a legal context. Legal correspondence can be subject to confidentiality and privilege and you have to be careful about how you manage it.