Go far together: Turning a bespoke Legal Aid Content Intelligence tool into public modules

Keeping legal aid content accurate is critical—and exhausting. Every year, statutory and regulatory changes require reviewing thousands of legal documents, a process that traditionally consumed countless hours of manual work.
This session shares how multiple Drupal development teams partnered with Legal Aid organizations to take their existing Drupal-based content intelligence system to the next level, adding enhanced features and expanding compatibility so more legal aid organizations can benefit from time-saving automation.
You'll discover how we navigated the technical challenges of enhancing a standalone Drupal instance while encapsulating its functionality into embeddable production modules and maintaining integration with existing sites. More importantly, you'll learn the collaboration strategies that enabled multiple developers to iteratively improve the system across evolving project scopes and timelines.
We'll cover:
Architectural decisions when evolving standalone vs. embedded Drupal applications
Managing scope changes and feature enhancements across multiple development phases
Coordinating between agency developers and non-profit stakeholders on an existing codebase
Building upon systems for long-term maintainability and setting a roadmap for the future
This isn't just a technical case study—it's a blueprint for how Drupal teams can collaborate effectively to enhance mission-driven projects that deliver measurable social impact.