Law School Computers

The UW Law Help Desk is responsible for purchasing, maintaining, cyber securing, and ultimately disposal of PCs for all Law School faculty, staff, and select student organizations (SBA, Moot Court, Law Review, Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society, Wisconsin International Law Journal).  For more information:

New Law School Office Computer Eligibility

Work from Home Computer Eligibility

Financial information

Purchasing Personal Computers

With Personal Funds

The UW Law School Help Desk does not provide purchasing assistance for computers to be purchased with personal (non-UW) funds.  NOTE:  These do NOT include purchases that are later reimbursed.  Reimbursed purchases are considered to be departmental equipment.

View DoIT's Tech Purchasing Guide for more information on how to purchase computers and accessories through campus processes.

NOTE: If you are planning to be re-imbursed

With Departmental Funds

For faculty and staff who are using departmental funds to purchase a computer for use at home, HELP@Law will consult with you and prepare a recommendation/quote from Dell or Apple.  Departmental funds include everything that is paid for through the Law business office using state funds including FISC, grants, professorships.  Since most of the campus licensing agreements are for university owned equipment, this will allow us great flexibility in installing campus licensed software on your work equipment.  For more details on purchasing with departmental funds and limitations, see https://law.wisc.edu/lawbiz/financialresources.html.

You may obtain alternate quotes from other vendors/sources on your own but please check with the law school's Business Office -- as of 11/19/2021 it’s the accountant Jennifer Gardner (jennifer.gardner@wisc.edu) -- to ensure state purchasing guidelines required for re-imbursement. When you have a quote you are satisfied with, you may give the necessary paperwork to the Business Officeto have a Purchase Order prepared and sent to the selected vendor.

If purchased with state funds, the computer must be delivered to the Law School. At that time, the helpdesk will install various support software to ensure security and help maintain the system. If you have other campus licensed software you need, we can help install it and possibly make other recommendations.  We’ll make sure it is configured and ready for use.   You are responsible for home setup.

Devices, such as laptops, tables, desktops, etc., need to be returned to IT at the end of their life cycle to be exchanged with newer equipment or when leaving employment at the Law School.

Computer Support

Departmentally Owned

If your PC was purchased with University funds (FISC, a grant, a Professorship, a graduate school account, etc.) your machine is fully supported by HELP@Law.  HELP@Law staff can provide limited technical support for personally purchased computers.

  1. We do not provide on-site home support; for almost all problems we’re able to video conference and/or screenshare.  For hardware issues, you must bring your PC (no cables, monitors, keyboard, etc. are necessary) to room 2115 of the Law School
  2. We can only install software that we support and own licenses to
  3. We will make every effort to ensure that no data is lost during whatever operations we perform, but we are not responsible for any data loss that may occur due to unforeseen problems. You are responsible for backing up your home system regularly or utilizing one of the supported cloud data storage platforms that campus has access to.
  4. We are not authorized repair agents of any manufacturer. We will recommend repair options.

Personally Owned

If your PC was purchased with personal funds, we provide very limited support for it. Personally purchased PC's receive less priority than Law School PC's. You must be prepared to leave your personally purchased PC with us, we’ll give you an estimate for how many days we’ll have it for.

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