NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Arthur Andersen was fined $500,000 and sentenced to five years' probation Wednesday by a federal judge who dealt the accounting firm the maximum sentence for its obstruction of justice conviction.

Federal District Court Judge Melinda Harmon issued the sentence in Houston following Andersen's June conviction related to the destruction of Enron Corp. documents.

Sentencing was largely a formality for Andersen which, barred from accounting, lost most of its clients in the weeks before and after its conviction. The Chicago-based company vowed to appeal.

"It's a horribly sad day as far as we're concerned," Andersen lawyer Rusty Hardin said. "People's lives have been incredibly disrupted."

Rusty Hardin, Andersen attorney, comments on the ruling and calls it a 'sad day' for the company. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

But Leslie Caldwell of the Department of Justice's Enron Task Force said Andersen employees have to look to a management that oversaw the books at WorldCom, Sunbeam and Waste Management. All three companies have had accounting problems

"We agree that those employees are for the most part honest and hard-working people," Caldwell said.

Judge Harmon imposed 13 different conditions on Andersen, which has 10 days to appeal. That appeal is important for Andersen, which faces scores of lawsuits related to its auditing work.

Andersen, once the largest of the nation's top five accounting firms, shuttered its auditing practice and closed most offices nationwide following its jury conviction for shredding Enron documents while on notice of a federal investigation.

Andersen now has fewer than 2,000 of its original 28,000 employees. In an era of corporate scandals, Andersen remains the only company to be found guilty of wrongdoing.

Hardin, the Andersen lawyer, repeated his contention that Andersen did not destroy documents to keep them from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was looking into the Enron matter.

A year from now, "People will say that ruining this company made no sense," Hardin said outside the courtroom

Enron went bankrupt last December after the Houston-based energy trader revealed it overstated profits by millions of dollars.

Before the sentencing, Richard Martin, a partner at the law firm Heller Ehrman, told CNNfn that the appeals process may answer important questions about what records auditors need to keep and what advice counsel gives its accounting clients.