Brightflag, a company that provides spend and matter management software for corporate legal departments, today announced the addition of a number of new features, all aimed at enhancing how inhouse teams manage their work and spending.

The new capabilities — some available today, others coming in June — build upon Brightflag’s established AI technology with new matter management tools, enhanced spend management features, and expanded generative AI capabilities.

Read more about Brightflag in the LawNext Legal Technology Directory.

Enhanced Matter Management

Earlier this year, Brightflag began expanding its matter management capabilities with the release of Matter Updates, which automatically collects status information from both in-house and external legal teams.

Today’s release adds three additional matter management capabilities:

  • A redesigned home page providing centralized visibility into legal work and spending.
  • Task management functionality allowing teams to create, assign, and track progress on tasks. (Shown in featured image above.)
  • Events tracking to monitor key milestones and legal deadlines.

The task management features are available immediately, while the redesigned home page and events functionality will roll out in June.

Strengthened Spend Management

Since its founding in Dublin in 2014, a primary focus of Brightflag has been on AI-powered legal spend management. The company reportedly processes billions in legal spending annually, all with the aim of helping legal departments achieve cost savings and operational efficiencies.

With today’s release, the company is adding two features designed to strengthen financial oversight:

  • Budget approval workflows enabling more control over matter budgets with multi-level approval routing based on each customer’s policies.
  • Enhanced support for matter-specific hourly rates, making it easier to enforce individual matter rate agreements.

A ‘More Intelligent’ AI Assistant

In 2024, Brightflag introduced “Ask Brightflag,” a generative AI assistant for legal work and spending insights. According to the company, hundreds of in-house teams now use this tool to gain operational insights quickly.

This latest update makes Ask Brightflag more intelligent by expanding its ability to answer specific questions about vendors, timekeepers, and individual work items completed by vendors, the company says.

Greater Control Over Spend

While Brightflag was one of the first, if not the first, to bring AI to legal spend management, that sector is increasingly competitive, with several AI-powered products targeting corporate legal operations.

According to its website, its customers include Clorox, Shopify and Volvo, for a platform that combines e-billing, matter management, and financial analytics.

“Brightflag has redefined enterprise legal management through its patented AI technology,” said Ian Nolan, cofounder and CEO of Brightflag. “With these new innovations, we’re giving in-house teams even greater control over their legal spend, while expanding our matter management capabilities to deliver end-to-end visibility into legal work.”

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Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.