LAW PreDiscovery

Here's a quick overview of some of the system requirements of Lexis LAW.

A processor speed of at least 1.7 GHz is required, and 3.0 is recommended. I thought my Toshiba laptop had a very robust processor, but it seems subpar at 1.73 GHz. You really need something special to run LAW. The recommended 4GB of RAM is a bit more reachable.

When you choose the option to create a new case, LAW will by default create the new case in the Program Files folder, but the System Requirements notes state that new cases should not be saved to this folder if you're running Windows 7 or Window Vista. Windows 8 and Windows 10 are not mentioned, but Windows XP and Windows 2008 are, which indicates the trial version is somewhat out of date. Windows Vista user can expect to encounter slower processing speeds.

Full text searches can't be run on LAW databases that use an Access database as their base. MS SQL Server is needed for such searches, and the Express Edition of it can be downloaded for free. However the free version won't work for databases greater than 10 GB and full text searching isn't possible with the Express Edition when there is more than 4 GB of data.

While LAW can run on either a 32 bit or a 64 bit operating system, the Electronic Discovery loader detailed in last night's tip will not work with the 64 bit version of Outlook.

LAW requires that eDrawings (freeware used for CAD) be installed to handle .dwg graphic files.