Unifying dozens of legal publications on a headless CMS

ALM’s Law.com powers dozens of award-winning national and regional legal publications across the U.S. As the company’s content and product offerings expanded, its highly customized WordPress-based CMS (known internally as Falcon) struggled to keep pace.

“We’ve been on a journey for many years to become a truly integrated, single-platform news organization. It began with the creation of a global newsroom where reporters and editors produce content that can be used across multiple brands,” says Gina Passarella, senior vice president of content at ALM. “Our previous CMS supported that strategy, but the experience wasn’t as seamless as we wanted.”

ALM needed a modern CMS that could support its newsroom, enable personalization and simplify operations across a growing network of sites. On the development side, the team wanted to decouple content from presentation to give developers more flexibility in building user experiences. This was also a requirement as the existing framework was already built using headless CMS architecture.

“Two years ago, when we made the decision, Brightspot already looked best-in-class for a content business,” says Jimi Li, ALM’s Chief Technology Officer. “All our business stakeholders loved the solution — it was a quick decision to migrate.”

ALM selected Brightspot CMS for its headless architecture, flexible content modeling and developer-friendly APIs. The migration involved consolidating content from more than 18 publications into a single CMS instance.

“Brightspot allowed us to easily create custom content types like pillar pages and event tags, which were hard to manage in WordPress,” says Sara Humphrey, the ALM project manager who steered the migration effort. “Now our editors just tag content and know exactly where it will show up.”

Brightspot’s GraphQL APIs enabled ALM’s developers to build custom migrators and integrations with existing systems. Editorial teams were onboarded with customized publishing guides and tools. “From a basic reporter/editor perspective, everyone will tell you Brightspot is a big improvement over Falcon,” says John Hernandez, a business analyst at ALM.

“From a technology standpoint, Brightspot’s headless architecture was key,” Li explains. “We had been headless before, but our solution was complicated and hard to maintain. Brightspot supports the hybrid headless architecture we want, integrating seamlessly with the rest of our systems.”

To minimize disruption and reduce complexity, the team decoupled the CMS migration from the front-end rebuild. “We broke the project into two pieces. We thought it would be a lot easier to stay headless and have Brightspot feed our content database, so we didn’t have to change the front end at the same time we were doing the CMS migration,” says Matt Perkins, Head of Engineering at ALM.

Brightspot significantly improved the user experience for ALM’s non-technical newsroom staff.

“With Brightspot, content creation has become easier and more streamlined,” says Passarella. “Reporters and editors don’t have to think as much about individual brands — they can focus on creating content. The tool is faster, the search functionality is stronger and the dashboard helps teams manage their specific needs.”

With Brightspot’s modular content capabilities, the unified CMS eliminated content duplication. Editors can now publish once and distribute across Law.com and affiliated sites without redundancy.

Brightspot also enabled a major strategic shift for ALM: the rollout of six core editorial pillars such as Business of Law and Legal Technology. “We added a pillar content type so editors can tag stories by topic area, and they’ll automatically appear in the right feed. That used to require workarounds in WordPress,” says Humphrey. “It’s now easy to get content to show up exactly where it needs to.”

To support its specialized legal audience, ALM integrated a third-party AI tool with Brightspot for taxonomy tagging. The tool scans articles and suggests metadata like jurisdictions, law firms and practice areas.

Brightspot makes taxonomy easier to manage and plays a central role in content curation. Editors apply consistent tags across content types — from articles to rankings packages — streamlining the way ALM organizes its content ecosystem.

ALM’s CTO Jimi Li also highlights how better internal content discovery directly improves newsroom efficiency and output.

“Of course, as a CMS, our editors use Brightspot to generate content and for research,” he says. “Through its AI features, we get content recommendations — ‘here’s what we published before’ — which helps editors generate ideas for future pieces.”

With its new CMS and website, ALM is ramping up efforts to deliver personalized experiences.

While Brightspot supports dynamic content delivery, the main engine for personalization is MISO, an AI-driven platform that powers the “My Law” homepage. Users select topics or firms they want to follow and their preferences shape on-site content feeds and newsletters. “We always had ambitions to personalize but now the integration with MISO lets us actually do it,” says Humphrey.

“Looking ahead, personalization is a major priority,” Passarella confirms. “We want to make it easier for readers to get the most relevant content while also exposing them to the breadth of our coverage. That means adding personalization and customization options, such as individualized newsletters and topic alerts, and ensuring the website supports those capabilities.”

Li underscores that Brightspot’s technical foundation is what makes these personalized experiences possible. “Personalization isn’t just about what the reader sees — it’s about having the flexibility to integrate with platforms like MISO and deliver that experience at scale,” he explains. “Brightspot’s hybrid headless architecture allows us to connect the dots between editorial content, user data and third-party tools without adding unnecessary complexity.”

He adds that this flexibility is crucial as ALM’s personalization strategy evolves. “The way readers want to consume content will continue to change,” Li says. “Brightspot gives us the ability to adapt quickly so we can keep tailoring experiences to individual users while still supporting the needs of the newsroom.”

The headless architecture gives ALM’s development team freedom to create front-end experiences using modern frameworks. Brightspot’s flexible data model and cloud-ready infrastructure also support future growth.

“We’re gradually moving from legacy brands to regional content hubs under Law.com,” says Hernandez. “Brightspot makes that possible. One story can now appear in multiple places without duplication.”

Perkins credits this architectural decision with protecting ALM’s past investments while setting them up for long-term flexibility. “It was important that we didn’t have to throw out our architecture and take on that project all at once. Brightspot let us update the back end without disrupting everything else.”

“The ability to integrate with diverse internal and external systems — many of them out-of-the-box — was a major selling point,” Li adds. “Implementation proved it was pretty painless to integrate Brightspot with our systems, too, compared to the heavy lift we faced before.”

The move to Brightspot has enabled ALM to unify content management across its portfolio of publications within a single CMS instance. Editorial workflows are now more streamlined, allowing editors to publish content once and distribute it efficiently across Law.com and its affiliated brands. Enhanced taxonomy and tagging features have improved how ALM organizes and curates content, making it easier to deliver targeted and timely information to readers. With integrations like MISO, ALM can now deliver personalized content experiences based on user interests.

Brightspot’s API-first headless architecture has empowered ALM’s technical team to scale and support modern, custom front-end sites. Importantly, the CMS supports ALM’s strategic shift toward regional content delivery through six new editorial pillars, giving the organization more control and flexibility in how it surfaces and syndicates stories across its network.

“We wanted a platform that allowed editorial staff to work more efficiently, optimize workflow and give our users a best-in-class customer experience,” Li reflects. “All of that led us to Brightspot.”

He also emphasizes the importance of choosing a partner that continues to innovate. “We heard strong reviews and references, and Brightspot was clearly the platform that could evolve and innovate with us,” Li says.

In short, the new CMS is helping ALM’s editorial work faster and smarter. And more content published equals higher page views, increased engagement and better performance for ALM’s subscription-based business model. “Brightspot has made our publishing faster, more efficient and more aligned with our integrated newsroom strategy,” Passarella says.