Littler Mendelson P.C.

Founded in 1942, Littler Mendelson is an international law firm focused on employment and labor law. The firm employs more than 900 attorneys in 56 locations that specialize in corporate compliance, labor, employment and benefits issues.

False Starts

Two years prior to partnering with Duo, Littler Mendelson started work on a new website that saw the law firm cycling through different unsuccessful vendors. The initial plan was to redo the site with Sharepoint, but the estimated costs quoted by other vendors were astronomical. When Littler’s CIO recommended Drupal instead of Sharepoint, Duo was called in to help in June 2011.

Because the wireframes and designs had been completed, the board of directors for Littler Mendelson imposed a September 1 deadline on the completion of the website. Jamileh Moeen, Director of Corporate Marketing for Littler Mendelson, was named as project leader and Duo’s main contact with the firm

Duo spent the first month fine-tuning the functional specifications. By July 1, the development team began constructing the website.

Content Migration

The volume of content on the existing site required a hefty content migration from Sharepoint to Drupal, including 672 bio pictures, nearly 1,500 news items and the update of some 800 professional profiles. To organize content for better searchability, Duo built out a new tagging system that filtered content by author, practice area or region/location, building new relationships between tags and content generated by the company’s network of attorneys.

Multi-Lingual

In addition to the migration and tag system, Duo also built a Spanish microsite for clients in Venezuela.

Strategic Functionality

“Understanding exactly what our audience visits our website for was how we identified the most useful element of the new site: the updated ‘people’ search function,” Jamileh said. “What we found was visitors weren’t coming to the site for news; often, they came searching for an attorney that they met at a networking function, for instance. We worked to make that search function more dynamic, including filter options like practice area and location.”

Ease of Use

With the prior site, Littler’s marketing team worked through IT to update site content -- but the new site, built on Drupal, put more power in the hands of the marketers. “We weren’t able to touch the site at all because that required a high level of tech know-how,” she elaborated. “Drupal is so easy to use that the marketing department has the ability to update content independently, freeing time for the IT team to focus on larger initiatives."

Collaboration

In addition to the company experience with the legal industry, Jamileh and her team enjoyed the partnership experience. “Working with the Duo team was great because they understood how important the launch deadline was and that we had no flexibility around it. At the same time, they set realistic expectations: if something could or couldn't be done in a certain amount of time, there was no lip-service.”

Performance Gains

Since the new site launched, Google search traffic has seen a 9 percent increase. From the same period the year before, the total amount of visitors to the site was up 37 percent. Littler has seen a 25 percent improvement in page load time on average, ensuring an efficient, seamless, experience for visitors.

Cost Advantage

In the end, Littler saved big on costs by choosing a Drupal implementation. “Besides offering us only a quarter of the functionality Drupal does, our initial plan to implement the new site on SharePoint would have cost us more than twice what we spent with Duo."

The site launched internally by the mandated September 1 deadline and to the public midway through the month, marking a huge victory for the Duo and Littler teams under a tight time frame.

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