Rebuilding a Code Library and building Solr integrations for American Legal Publishing

overview

American Legal Publishing helps municipalities to codify their laws and ordinances. Powered by 40+ years of experience, modern technology, and its team of attorneys, legal editors, and staff, American Legal serves both local governments and citizens. It provides a body of current, enforceable regulations, in a way that makes the law easy to use and reference. American Legal currently serves more than 3,000 municipal and county clients nationwide, including the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Tucson, Cleveland, Albuquerque, San Francisco, Honolulu, Boise, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs and many others.The American Legal Publishing Code Library is a key tool through which the organization serves its clients. The Code Library serves as the public-facing hub for publishing and accessing code information. It has key features that ensure broad accessibility, maximum uptime, precision search, and rapid load times on both desktop and mobile views. APAX led a complete rewrite of the American Legal Code Library, helping it to move beyond the constraints of a legacy software package.

Methods used

Project Discovery
UX Design
Full-Stack Web Development
DevOps (CI/CD)
Maintenance

Process - Research & Design

APAX enjoyed the opportunity to help American Legal by putting into action more than a decade of experience responding to complex business challenges with elegant technical solutions. Since the previous software package could no longer be updated, APAX started from the ground up, providing a complete rebuild that would lay a solid foundation for the Code Library well into the future. Knowing that the search feature was central to the Code Library’s effectiveness, APAX started by integrating Solr, a powerful search tool. Apache Solr is a fast, open-source, enterprise-grade search tool, used by world-class brands like eBay, Netflix, Ticketmaster, and Zappos. It helps APAX to provide several key search capabilities for American Legal, including:

Multiple Search Formats
Automatic Stem Searches (finds plurals of words)
Synonym Searches

APAX then paired Solr with Django, a top Python-based, open-source web framework. Django’s origins in a fast-paced journalism environment forged it with excellent document and content-management tools for administrators, while maintaining responsive performance when serving pages with significant traffic. APAX used React as the front-end library to help provide the rich, composable layouts needed for displaying complex codes while providing meaningful context for users. While React can sometimes pose challenges for Search Engine indexing, APAX chose to enable server-side rendering to help Code Library results to have great SEO, which in turn helps municipalities in their goal of making ordinances easy for anyone to discover.

Outcomes & Ongoing Partnership

This project was a great success for American Legal Publishing. When it launched in early 2020, APAX’s rebuild of the Code Library met or exceeded all of the company’s requirements. The improved user experience helped American Legal to expand its offering to additional municipal clients. The company gained market share over a key competitor, growing its client base by nearly 50%. The improved SEO helped traffic to the Code Library grow to over 700k Monthly Active Users (MAU). In early 2023, American Legal Publishing was acquired and became part of the International Code Council Family of Solutions.

Key Stats

Able to search 3 million documents for a keyword in milliseconds
700k monthly active users
Serves more than 3000 municipalities

Tech Solutions Designed to Empower Your Organization

At APAX Software, we don’t just create websites and mobile apps—we design, develop, and support the platforms that make a difference. As a full-service software agency based in Lexington, Kentucky, we specialize in developing digital solutions that make a difference, trusted by healthcare systems and relied on by commercial teams. Whether you need a custom software solution or a major system overhaul, APAX delivers with transparency and clear communication. With over 300 companies helped and 91,276+ development hours logged, we provide user-friendly tools that empower your team. Ready to solve your technical challenges? Call now or explore our case studies to see how APAX can elevate your organization.

Schedule a Call