And getting sued by lawyers, at that.

Exactly this. I wouldn't code legal software for any amount of money.

I recently picked up a refurbished Dell Precision with the Xeon processor and 32GB RAM for $1500. Coming from PCs that had 16GB RAM but would always get near the limit, the added memory is amazing. Don't rule out last year's hardware, it still performs exceptionally.

Do you run linux or win? if linux: any issues with drivers?

I haven't had it long, so I have only ran Windows on it. The Linux subsystem actually does everything I need it to, so I'm a happy camper.