Linklaters, a London-based law firm with 30 offices in 22 countries and more than 2,000 lawyers, said it expects that the upgrade will let it search for legal data on multiple systems through a single query.

Linklaters has been storing legal documents and project data in EMC's Documentum content management system for several years, but it must also retrieve information from legacy, library and categorization systems, as well as Web documents stored on desktops.

The law firm hopes that internal tests of the Google Desktop upgrade will show that it won't have to undertake separate searches of those systems, said Tony Bland, an information systems strategy manager at Linklaters. Googling the Desktop

Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC said the Google function is now available as an add-on with the current Documentum Version 5.3 software. The tool will be integrated in Version 5.4, which is slated to ship later this year, according to EMC.

The Google tool allows users to access unstructured content stored on desktops, including documents, Web pages, XML, and audio and video files, said Lubor Ptacek, director of product marketing for EMC's software group.