The Project
The State Bar of California regulates the legal profession in the nation's most populous state, serving attorneys, applicants, and the public through a complex digital ecosystem. When their two websites needed modernization, they turned to Kalamuna to develop and transform a fragmented platform into a coherent, accessible, and customizable content management system. Not only did we develop two high-performing Drupal websites, but we also improved the user experience for key audiences, including the public, attorneys, and law students. Similarly, both sites share a common architecture but have differentiated content and branding.
Kalamuna's partnership with the State Bar recognized the high stakes involved. This wasn't just a website rebuild: it was modernizing a public service platform where accuracy, accessibility, and findability directly impact public trust and legal professionals' ability to serve Californians. We worked closely with State Bar teams across multiple departments to understand their constraints, workflows, and the needs of their diverse user base before making any technical decisions.
Project Tour
One of the most critical needs was helping users find what they were looking for quickly and accurately. The State Bar's sites contained vast amounts of information, from attorney licensing requirements to disciplinary history and status to public comment periods, and users needed better tools to navigate this complexity. We implemented faceted search capabilities across both sites, allowing users to filter content by type, date, and other relevant criteria. This means attorneys and members of the public can easily search for disciplinary actions by specific timeframes or licensee numbers.
Additionally, we leveraged our ongoing partnership with the Justice Management Institute to identify a workable content governance strategy, given the State Bar's maintenance of over 5,000 PDFs of rulings, rules, FAQs, and related materials. As a result of this work, we converted thousands of State Bar Rules PDFs into dynamic web pages, significantly improving maintenance and discoverability of this critical information.
With thousands of pages of content requiring migration to the modernized platform, maintaining accuracy and accessibility was paramount. The State Bar handles sensitive, legally significant information, records of unauthorized practice of law, disciplinary actions, board agendas, and public comment periods, all of which could have serious consequences if errors or broken links occur. We created an innovative AI-powered scraped migration, with additional re-coding of several high-use external web applications and a migration to Drupal.
Board agendas and meeting materials require particular attention, as they support transparency in the State Bar's governance. We addressed technical issues affecting how these materials were displayed and organized, ensuring the public could easily find and access current and historical board information.
We set up the State Bar of California for long-term success by enabling customizable websites that allow them to easily edit and update content. Our team developed a component library for the client to utilize with the layout builder and trained their teams to use them going forward. We empowered their marketing teams to create rich, easy-to-edit landing pages. Additionally, there are custom landing pages powered by search for news, reports, and data, as well as a robust help center that aggregates FAQs.
The State Bar needed a platform that their team could manage and evolve over time without the need to repeatedly leverage outside technical teams. We focused on creating sustainable content management patterns, clear governance structures, and a maintainable technical architecture. This included implementing layout builders and templates for recurring content types, establishing consistent styling patterns across content areas, and creating documentation and workflows to support the State Bar's ongoing content management needs. We also addressed technical debt and maintenance challenges by upgrading the platform to the latest Drupal versions, implementing more efficient content reuse patterns, and establishing structures to streamline future updates and enhancements.
Kalamuna was an excellent partner. They didn’t just deliver a solution—they invested the time to truly understand our challenges and what success looks like for our web visitors. What set them apart was their collaborative approach: presenting us with multiple technical options and helping us evaluate which would best serve our diverse web audience. From day one through launch, their unwavering commitment to our success was evident in everything they did.
Jorge Descaire
Program Director, State Bar of California