Littler Mendelson is the world's largest employment and labor law firm with over 1,000 attorneys. The firm's CTO realized the desktop environment could not keep up with business demands due to slow logons and stability issues. He decided to overhaul the entire desktop ecosystem to simplify management and improve the user experience. Littler implemented AppSense's DesktopNow and DataNow solutions to streamline management, accelerate logons to under 60 seconds, and provide reliable access to data from any device.

1. Littler Mendelson is the world’s largest employment and labor law practice with more than 1,000
attorneys in over 60 offices in North, Central and South America. Littler represents management in all
aspects of employment and labor law and serves as a single source solution provider to the global
employer community.
Littler supports a highly mobile workforce that demands extreme performance, reliability and stability
from its technology infrastructure, especially the desktop. “The legal desktop is pretty complex,”
notes Littler CTO Apo Hagopian. “There are many integration points with Microsoft Office and other
application plug-ins. Some of them play well together, others don’t.”
When Hagopian joined Littler, nearly three years ago, he realized the firm’s infrastructure couldn’t
keep up with business demands. The first order of business: transforming the data center. Then it was
time to focus on the desktop. “The desktop was functional, but it wasn’t scaling well,” recalls
Hagopian. “Logons were slow—some times as long as five minutes. And there were stability issues
when it came to things like Offline Files and data access.”
Hagopian decided the entire desktop ecosystem needed an overhaul, from what users saw and how
applications and data were delivered to controlling and managing the desktop behind the scenes. “I
wanted to simplify management,” he continues. “Things like GPOs and release management. I wanted
to get away from complex scripting and integration. But I also wanted to put the user first and build a
system around a user-centric approach.”
Ultimately, this transformation would not only serve the user with a stable desktop but also centralize
user configuration and data files, positioning Littler for migrations and platform changes such as
Windows 10.
Cleaning house
Littler’s desktop environment is largely physical—laptops and desktop machines. Littler IT serves
2,000 users of which approximately 1,200 are attorneys who primarily use laptops. In addition to
excessive logon times, profile bloat and corruption cost Littler substantial downtime. “Attorneys open
up a lot of applications concurrently,” Hagopian says. “And if one plugin misbehaves, it can lock up the
entire CPU.” Hagopian wanted to abstract the user layer from Windows and manage it more effectively.
As Hagopian describes it, he was looking for a solution to help him “clean house.” And he looked at a
lot of solutions. “There are many tools out there,” he explains. “What eventually steered me to AppSense
was its technology for streamlining GPO, user profile and data management. These are critical for an
enterprise-scale deployment.”
In addition to its technology what really resonated with Hagopian was the AppSense user first
philosophy. “It really aligned with my vision,” he comments. “’We’ll give you the best desktop ever.’
That’s what I wanted to do.”
Challenges
n Support 2,000 users, including mobile workforce
n Simplify all aspects of desktop management
n Accelerate logons
n Enable anywhere data access to improve user
experience and simplify migration and break-fix.
Solution
n AppSense DesktopNow
n AppSense DataNow
Benefits
n Reduced logons to under 60 seconds
n Streamlined group policy
n Decreased profile and data corruption
n Resolved integration and synchronization issues
n Eliminated local admin accounts
n Centralized data enables any device access,
easy migration and break fix.
Legal Services
Littler Mendelson
Case study
Littler Mendelson uses AppSense to transform
desktop infrastructure
“My goal was to give users a good desktop experience,
so they could focus on their work – not the technology.
And that’s what I’m hearing: ‘This is the best desktop
ever.’ I can’t ask for anything more than that.”
Apo Hagopian,
Littler Mendelson CTO

2. “What eventually steered me to
AppSense was its technology for
streamlining GPO, user profile and
data management. These are critical
for an enterprise-scale deployment.
”Apo Hagopian,
Littler Mendelson CTO
Managing the desktop estate with AppSense
Optimizing the desktop experience
AppSense Environment Manager accelerated logons to under 60 seconds, while Performance
Manager solved the performance issues caused by “runaway” plugins.
Simplifying desktop management
Environment Manager also reduced profile corruption, while its snapshot and rollback capabilities
made support faster when corruption or personalization errors did occur. Application Manager
removed the barriers faced by mobile users who needed access to specific applications and OS
features. “With Application Manager, we could eliminate administrative rights, keep our environment
secure and still give users rights to what they needed. Whether it was accessing software or installing
a printer,” adds Hagopian.
Delivering reliable data access
Environment Manager and DataNow ensured that data and personalization settings followed users
wherever they went. In addition, they simplified user onboarding, PC refresh and routine break-fix
tasks. DataNow also eliminated synchronization and file management problems. “Littler has multiple
points for file synchronization,” remarks Hagopian. “Fixing synchronization was a big deal.”
Looking ahead
With AppSense controlling the desktop environment, Littler finds itself in the position to plan for the
future, such as a possible migration to Windows 10. “Without always having to put out fires, we have
time to draft a forward looking strategy,” Hagopian says. “Before AppSense, that would have been a
very challenging move.”
“My goal was to give users a good desktop experience, so they could focus on their work – not the
technology. And that’s what I’m hearing: ‘This is the best desktop ever.’ I can’t ask for anything more
than that.”
About AppSense
AppSense is the global leader in user environment
management (UEM) with over 3,000 enterprise
customers worldwide that have deployed to over
7 million desktops. AppSense DesktopNow and
DataNow enable IT teams to deliver the ultimate
user experience and productivity across physical
and virtual desktops while optimizing security
and reducing operational and infrastructure costs.
The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA
with offices around the world.
Legal Services
Littler Mendelson