Attorney General Martha Coakley expects to wrap up a review of whether a top City Hall official was potentially violating the state's public records law through the regular deletion of emails in “weeks, not months.”

The Boston Globe reported during last year’s mayoral election that Michael Kineavy, a top aide to Mayor Thomas Menino, regularly deleted his emails. The Globe received 18 emails after the paper had requested for copies of emails sent to Kineavy and from him. Secretary of State William Galvin forwarded the matter to Coakley’s office in October 2009 after he had recovered the deleted emails.

In a statement after the completion of his review, Galvin stated that “some records were deleted inappropriately and without permission.” But the determination of whether the law was broken remains up to Coakley’s office.

Coakley told the Reporter that the review has been “comprehensive” and will be a look at “what happened and why.” “It’s taken a while, I know,” she said.

Coakley also said that the focus would be on what cities and towns should be doing going forward, since the public records statute is “outdated.” Emails were not in existence when the statute was first put in place, she said.

Coakley pointed to a similar statute during her investigation of the Big Dig tunnel collapse: should a corporation be charged and convicted of manslaughter, the state would only be able to charge the company with a $1,000 fee. The fee was set in 1819.

Coakley noted that Menino’s office had changed its policies and that Galvin’s office had helped recover the deleted emails. Menino’s office has also posted the thousands of deleted emails on the city’s official website.

There is no “smoking gun” to her knowledge, Coakley said.