Brightflag Adds Qualitative Reports for Companies to Better Evaluate Outside Counsel

By Bob Ambrogi on February 4, 2021

The Ireland-based company Brightflag, whose platform uses artificial intelligence to help corporate legal departments better manage their legal spend and legal matters, is adding a set of new reports to its existing reporting feature that are designed to provide companies with a more nuanced perspective for assessing their relationships with outside counsel.

The news comes fresh on the heels of the company’s news in December that it had raised $28 million in a growth equity investment, which followed an $8.5 million Series A round in April 2019. The company launched in 2015.

With the new reports, for each matter managed on Brightflag, the designated matter leads can rate the associated law firm across five qualitative criteria:

Communication.
Quality of advice.
Business alignment
Budget adherence.
Overall recommendation.

These ratings are incorporated into dashboard reports, where legal department leaders can compare vendors across one or more
metrics as they weigh critical resourcing decisions.

“By enabling customers to capture qualitative nuances in objective reports, we’re making it easier than ever to conduct holistic performance evaluations and identify top business partners,” Brightflag cofounder and CEO Ian Nolan said in a statement.

Brightflag’s product competes with legal operations products such as Legal Tracker from Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis CounselLink, and SimpleLegal.

Its platform provides e-billing, invoice management, invoice review and accruals management. Its AI technology reads invoices submitted by outside counsel and highlights breaches of billing guidelines. Its software tracks accruals and work-in-progress and provides a variety of reports. It also tracks historical matter billing and uses analytics to help in negotiating fees.

The company was founded in Dublin under its original name Legalshine by Nolan, who was formerly business development manager at another case management company, and Alex Kelly, now COO and formerly an associate attorney at Matheson in Dublin.