As part of the enhancements that were added in LAW 7.4, you can now run multiple instances of LAW on a single workstation.  

 

With multiple instances, a small litigation team can balance workflows and productions in parallel without requiring multiple machines for each process. For example, an attorney would be able to log into a virtual or physical machine and perform document review and searching while an analyst is tiffing on that same virtual or physical machine.  Another example would be an analyst running productions while another user is importing.

 

Taking advantage of multi-instance scenarios can result in an infrastructure cost savings:

LAW 7.3: Tiff, Import, Export, and Index at the same time -Requires 4 individual machines

LAW 7.4: Tiff, Import, Export, and Index at the same time -Requires 1 machine with multiple user instances

The following sections provide a breakdown of how various LAW processes work in regards to multi-instance scenarios.

ED Loader

ED Loader is limited to one instance per virtual or physical machine.  When ED Loader is already running and a user tries to open a second instance, the user will be notified that an ED Loader instance is already running.

TURBO IMPORT

Turbo Import already supported multiple logins prior to the LAW 7.4 release.  You can run as many instances up to the available cores on a virtual or physical machine.

OCR

Multiple OCR batch processes cannot be run.  If an instance of LAW is running OCR via Batch Processing, a second instance will be prompted to create a distributed batch job, which will be queued and automatically processed when the first instance is done or another LAW machine (different virtual or physical machine) becomes available.

INDEXING

Multiple LAW instances can not index the same case, but they can index different cases in parallel.  The total number of index workers across all instances of LAW on a system is limited to the number of available cores.  This is further limited by the "Index Workers" case setting.

BATCH PROCESSING

Only one instance across multiple user sessions can perform batch processing.  If an instance of LAW is batch processing, a second instance will be prompted to create a distributed batch job, which will be queued and automatically processed when the first instance is done or another LAW machine (different virtual or physical machine) becomes available.

SCAN

Only one instance of LAW can be connected to any scanner on a system at a given time.  A user can disconnect from a scanner to allow other users on the system to use it.  If a scanner is disconnected, the next time LAW is launched, a scanner will not be connected automatically.

TURBO EXPORT

Turbo Export is limited to one instance per virtual or physical machine.  When Turbo Export is already running and a user tries to start a new Turbo Export, they will be informed that Turbo Export is already running.

Law Management Console (LMC)

One instance of LMC is allowed per machine.  If a user attempt to launch a second LMC on the same system, they will be shown a message indicating the user that is currently running LMC on the machine.

ADMINISTRATION

Multiple instances of LAW can generate reports, view documents, and perform administrative tasks.