Case study - SCOTUSblog
A complete platform rebuild preserving two decades of Supreme Court journalism.
A migration to Sanity and ground-up rebuild - 20 years of case data and editorial archives preserved, a redesigned reader experience, a new newsletter program, and commercial partnership support.
- Client
- SCOTUSblog
- Sector
- Legal news & analysis
- Engagement
- Full-platform rebuild & ongoing partnership
About SCOTUSblog
SCOTUSblog has covered the Supreme Court of the United States for more than 20 years, delivering independent reporting and expert analysis to lawyers, journalists, academics, and engaged citizens. Its archive is more than a collection of articles - it’s a structured record of the Court’s work, with case pages tracking dockets, filings, opinions, and argument coverage that readers and researchers rely on daily. The platform underneath that archive hadn’t kept pace: aging infrastructure made publishing harder than it needed to be, offered no direct channel to readers, and left the publication’s commercial potential untapped.
The challenge
The mandate was to modernize without losing anything. Two decades of editorial content in a variety of formats, plus a structured archive of case data - the archive is what makes SCOTUSblog indispensable, and losing fidelity in migration was not an option. The existing platform couldn’t support modern publishing workflows or the traffic surges of opinion days, when much of the legal world shows up at once. No newsletter program and no reader accounts meant no way to reach the audience directly, personalize offers, or build toward subscription revenue. And a large, loyal, professional readership came with no infrastructure to sell, deliver, or report on partnerships.
CMS migration & platform build
We migrated SCOTUSblog onto Sanity, maintaining and migrating 20 years of data - the editorial archive plus the entire case data archive, with its relationships preserved. Structured content keeps every docket, filing, opinion, and argument connected, so readers can still trace a case from petition to opinion - and editors publish against a modern, flexible content model instead of fighting legacy templates.
Complete redesign & rebrand
A ground-up redesign and rebrand gives the most authoritative Supreme Court coverage on the web a home to match - a modern visual identity, a clearer reading experience, and information architecture built around how the legal world actually uses the site. And the platform is built to hold up on opinion days, when traffic surges within minutes.
Newsletter launch & ESP integration
We launched SCOTUSblog’s newsletter program and integrated Iterable with the CMS, so editorial publishes newsletters from the same place they publish articles. The newsletter is the publication’s first owned channel - a direct line to readers that no algorithm sits between - and the program has grown newsletter subscriptions 400% while opening the door to personalized offers and sponsorship inventory.
Identity & account management
A new login and account layer enables personalized offers - and lays the foundation for a subscription platform and a new revenue channel. Known readers also unlock audience insights: a clearer picture of who is reading, what they value, and which segments are ready to pay.
Commercial partnership enablement
We enabled commercial partnerships in the newsletter and on-site - a streamlined platform to sell, manage, deliver, and report on campaign performance without growing operational overhead. The publication owns the relationships; the infrastructure we built makes them easy to operate and measure.
Moving forward
The archive is intact, new revenue channels are open, and the publication finally has a direct relationship with its readers. This wasn’t a like-for-like rebuild - we changed the trajectory. The team now has revenue levers its first two decades never offered: a direct reader relationship, owned channels, and the infrastructure to fund the next two decades of coverage on its own terms.
