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CILS is one of the oldest nonprofit law firms in the country devoted exclusively to Native American rights in California, but the organization had no dedicated platform for delivering legal education at scale. Community members needed accessible ways to learn about their rights on issues like ICE encounters and student protections, legal professionals needed a path toward CLE-accredited training, and CILS staff needed structured onboarding and ongoing professional development. Without a system in place, CILS had no way to reach these audiences consistently or track who was engaging with the material.
We began with a needs assessment across three tiers of requirements, then built demos and ran live vendor meetings with three finalist platforms. TalentLMS stood out for its professionalism, its branch structure that could cleanly separate public and internal learning, unlimited-learner pricing that stays flat as CILS's free public audience grows, and confirmed AI privacy protections. We designed a two-branch architecture, CILS Academy for the public and the CILS Staff Learning Hub for internal training, and built a repeatable four-phase course development process so CILS could sustain the program independently.
TalentLMS was selected, configured, and launched with role-based access across both branches. Three courses were developed and built: a five-module public course on rights during ICE encounters, a four-module public course on students' rights to wear tribal regalia at graduation, and a six-module internal staff course on working in Tribal communities, led by CILS's Executive Director. All public content was written in plain language at a 6th–8th grade reading level and structured for mobile use, with legal accuracy confirmed through subject matter expert and attorney review before publication. CILS now has a reusable instructional framework, a documented AI-assisted content workflow, and a training guide so the program can keep growing independently.
