UC Berkeley School of Law

Playing the short and long game of website relevance.

The UC Berkeley School of Law is revered as one of the premier law schools in the U.S. Its website acts as a valuable resource for its applicants, students, faculty, and alumni.

Services Provided

Accessibility
Content Strategy
SSO Integration
Database Migration
Website Maintenance
Long-Term Support

Our Approach

The Challenge

With a website that needs to accommodate four distinct audiences, it’s no surprise the team at UC Berkeley’s School of Law needed a strong partner for keeping its website not only relevant, but measurably successful in website accessibility.

Together we created a two-phase plan that first addressed immediate fixes and updates, then longer-term tactics for improvement.

In addition, we were asked to support the day-to-day needs of the website’s editors by implementing feature adjustments that help them accomplish their goals. That opportunity was gladly accepted, knowing it would grow our knowledge of different Centers and Institutes at Berkeley Law, and give us an inside perspective on the challenges their website editors face.

The Solution

The highest-priority projects were quickly identified and addressed first. They included importing and migrating data from their former RedDot system, and adding website pages for important initiatives like racial justice and the School’s partnership with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic.

Once we completed this first phase of work, we reviewed the website for next phase frontend and backend improvements. Our recommendations and follow-up work fell under several improvement categories like overall website improvements, editor support, and accessibility work.

We then made programmatic revisions that addressed styling and building blocks, labeling and instructions, search and replace, and ARIA labeling.

For team training and documentation, we helped establish editor policies and best practices for their team.

Key Actions

Added ability to include new multimedia content like podcasts

Developed automated editor workflows that enable event organizers to edit content around their events

Optimized site load times with CSS and JS refactors and improved the desktop menu to make it more user-friendly and attractive

Conducted a design overhaul of the Research page to improve organization and clarity

Engaged on the final programming for a redesign of the J.D. Admissions homepage, strictly based on the Berkeley Law Viewbook

Revamped the Faculty Profiles section of the site by adding an expertise filter, creating a new profile taxonomy called Areas of Interest, and unifying CPT’s

Implemented a new calendar using an “agenda view”

Improved accessibility by adding alt text to images, eliminating non-descriptive and duplicate links, ensuring linked videos have captions for video or transcripts for audio, and deleting old content

Results

Both phases were successfully completed, with immediate fixes resolved to assist website editors and meet accessibility standards.

We continue to partner with the UC Berkeley Law team on their website improvements, while acting as support for their ongoing website maintenance.

Project Journey

Start

Finish

Discovery
1. 1. Accessibility Assessment
2. 2. Workflow Assessment
Design
1. 3. UX Design
Development
1. 4. Refactored Code
2. 5. Data Migration
3. 6. Accessibility Improvements
4. 7. Multimedia Integration
5. 8. Automated Editor Workflows