Improved Billing Compliance

Evidence and data. Interviewees input their billing guidelines and agreed billing rates into Brightflag, after which their vendors submitted invoices, including fees and expenses, in their preferred formats (e.g., LEDES or PDFs). With Brightflag’s patented, automated AI invoice review, the solution automatically flagged line items that didn’t meet guidelines. In addition, the flags caught any issues that looked like entry errors, including incorrect rates or duplicate charges.

The frequency of these discrepancies became apparent to interviewees as they began using Brightflag. The program director of outside counsel management at a technology company noted that on a daily basis, they receive flags for travel time charges. Meanwhile, the director of legal operations at the healthcare organization noted how Brightflag frequently caught taxes listed on invoices that shouldn’t have been there due to the organization’s nonprofit status.

Given the time it would take to challenge these charges in the past, interviewees would let them slide and simply pay them. With Brightflag’s auto-reject feature, interviewees were able to stop invoices with these out-of-compliance charges from being accepted. This change led to thousands of dollars in cost savings annually for the interviewees.

For the telecom organization, the group head of legal operations attributed 2% of their legal counsel savings to consistent enforcement of billing guidelines. The interviewee said: “Brightflag gives us consistency on applying our billing guidelines, especially for smaller items you may miss in busy matters. It helps you spot an error where they may have double entry for a meeting or the wrong number of partners in a meeting. … It’s the first time we’re getting that level of rigor applied consistently across all of our bills.”

In addition to savings on incremental charges, interviewees saw instances of significant savings on errant invoices. The healthcare organization saved as much as $300,000 from enforcing billing guidelines with one outside legal vendor. The director of legal operations at the healthcare organization noticed they were paying for charges that fell outside of their obligation and quickly fixed that issue. The interviewee said: “In the first month we had Brightflag, we enforced billing guidelines that said we weren’t going to reimburse for usage fees of legal research tools. Those overhead costs we avoided resulted in over $300,000 in savings.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes that the organization has $5 million in annual legal spend. Of that, Brightflag helps to flag and/or reject invoices that are out of compliance with billing guidelines. These invoice compliance infractions represent 4% of spend annually that the organization recoups.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:

• The annual revenue and scale of legal spend.

• Vendors the organization works with and frequency with which they do not follow billing guidelines.

• The potential cost of each billing guideline infraction.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $398,000.

Savings From Discounts

Evidence and data. Interviewees recognized additional cost savings as Brightflag automatically verified whether outside legal firms correctly applied discounts in their invoices. In the past, the volume of invoices received made it too difficult for users to review if discounts rates were applied, so the organization would pay those costs without challenging them.

Interviewees had multiple discounts configured with Brightflag, streamlining verification with several outside legal counsel vendors with which they worked. Brightflag’s automatic recalculations on discounts when additional invoices were submitted further supported operations with discounts being accurately applied.

For the technology organization, discounts were a key factor in it reaching just under $1 million in cost savings in the first year with Brightflag. The program director of outside counsel management said: “Discounts and timekeeper savings go hand in hand for us, and we were able to see what was being billed and driving those calculations [on discounts]. It helped us with rate negotiations to push back on what discounts vendors were applying and drive communications on how to make those more advantageous for us.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes that it recognizes it can save 1% of legal spend costs based on enforcement of discounts, informed by greater visibility into their spend.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:

• The annual revenue and scale of legal spend.

• The discounts the organization receives from its vendors.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $99,000.

Avoided Timekeeper Rate Charges

Evidence and data. Brightflag streamlined interviewees’ ability to manage timekeeper rates as the platform flagged or auto-rejected any submissions with unexpected changes in rates, requests from unapproved timekeepers, or missing rate information. Interviewees avoided paying additional unexpected costs, which often added up to notable sums, on timekeeper rates with Brightflag overseeing them.

For the program director of outside counsel management at a technology company, Brightflag  how rates were increasing at firms they worked with, which their organization had blindly accepted. The interviewee said: “A scary number of firms told us they had been raising their rates and that we never said anything about it. We were accepting rate increases without any idea of how much they were. Brightflag allowed us to dive deep into how much those rates changed and have conversations around pushing back on those costs.”

Enforcement of billing guidelines with Brightflag also helped organizations to avoid unnecessary timekeeper rate charges. The legal operations manager at a SaaS organization shared an instance in which they saved $100,000 based on time entries being submitted outside of their 90-day timeline for submissions. The interviewee said: “With Brightflag, we instituted in our outside counsel guidelines that you have to submit an invoice within 90 days of the time that work is done. We had one firm submit for over $100,000 after that 90-day mark. We negotiated to pay some of it, but we were able to hold them accountable because of the guidelines they signed off on.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes that the organization avoids 0.75% in timekeeper rate charges that it would have previously paid. Brightflag auto-rejecting charges higher than the agreed-upon rates and having greater visibility over timekeeper rates drives this improvement.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:

• The annual revenue and scale of legal spend.

• The frequency with which submitted timekeeper rates vary from expected charges and how much those rates can be rejected or negotiated downward.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $75,000.

More Effective Spend From Greater Visibility Over Budget

Evidence and data. Brightflag’s centralization of legal spend information and reporting on spending provided interviewees with greater insights to make more informed decisions about their legal budgets. In particular, the user-friendly reporting visuals of Brightflag made it easier for lawyers and legal operations staff to follow how they were allocating legal spend. The group head of legal operations at a telecom company said: “In terms of money or budget management, having a visual bar that shows how you’re tracking day to day on each matter gives you better cost control. When we used to review an invoice, it may not have looked like much in costs, but if we looked at the entire matter, then we see we’ve got to end this matter more quickly. It improves our conversations with finance because they know we’re tracking everything really well.”

Whereas interviewees previously managed a plain spreadsheet that looked at overall spend, Brightflag enabled them to make more customized reports that revealed greater insights about their budgeting. At the healthcare organization, the director of legal operations created reports by hospital and detailed which ones generated claims and how many were medical malpractice versus employment claims. The interviewee said: “Before Brightflag, we did not have any insight into our spend and its distribution across cases. We’re a hospital system with a bunch of different hospitals, and now we have insights into the legal spend going into each hospital proportionally.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes that it reduces its legal spend by 1% with insight from Brightflag informing more efficient legal cost control.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:

• The annual revenue and scale of legal spend.

• The amount of legal spend that is not used effectively and results in unsatisfactory outcomes.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $99,000.

Invoice Review Productivity

Evidence and data. Brightflag helped interviewees to maximize the productivity of employees managing legal invoices and budget reports. Interviewees had such large outside counsel invoice volume that internal lawyers themselves would help with admin work. Whereas invoice reviews and accruals took more than half of the workweek for the legal team to manage, Brightflag’s automated reviews reduced it to only a few hours, freeing lawyers’ time to focus on their actual legal work.

Brightflag’s automated, AI-powered invoice review also enabled teams to take a deeper look at flags on invoices to understand the root of issues with spend. The program director of outside counsel management at a technology organization previously spent upward of two days investigating issues with spend on reports. First, they would request reports from their accounts payable solution and spend hours digging through them to find line-item information. With Brightflag, it took minutes to call up this information and review, accelerating time to resolution on the issues for legal operations.

When it came to creating reports on legal spend, Brightflag streamlined the process while providing granularity that would not have otherwise been achievable. The group head of legal operations at a telecom organization said it would have taken a day to create a weekly report, and now it takes a few minutes. They added, “It would have taken hours, and it may not have been the most complete picture because you would have been relying on manual records, and then we would have to go trawl the AP system to make sure we had all the right matters.”

Users leveraged this information to also avoid bothering their lawyers with questions: Seeing information like what’s been accrued but not yet billed saved them time on this interaction. The billing manager at the telecom organization gained bandwidth with Brightflag, reallocating half of their time to other projects related to data analysis.

Brightflag’s easy-to-use interface also made it accessible for employees outside of legal teams at interviewees’ organizations. The legal operations manager at a SaaS company said: “We have some people outside of legal who engage firms, and we’ve been able to bring them into using Brightflag with very little training. For example, our equity work that's done through our HR team — all of those invoices flow through Brightflag. The HR team comes in to review and approve them in Brightflag, even though it doesn't roll up to our budget.” Altogether, Brightflag helped to modernize invoice management for an organization that had previously relied on spreadsheets.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• On an annual basis, 480 invoices are submitted to the organization.

• Without a solution like Brightflag, each invoice takes 30 minutes to review. With Brightflag, time spent reviewing invoices is reduced by 80%.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for internal lawyer FTEs who support invoice reviews is $100. This assumption is based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates and considerations for additional benefits (e.g., paid time off, retirement, etc.).

• The equivalent of one full-time legal operations employee allocates one workday each week to accruals. In Year 1, time spent on this work is improved by 50%. By Year 2, this climbs to 75% as the employee reaches maturity with Brightflag and establishes best practices.

• The equivalent of two legal operations employees spend one workday per week on reports and dashboards. Their productivity increases by 66% in Year 1. Productivity further increases in Years 2 and 3 as they create more reports and refine dashboards.

• The assumed fully burdened hourly rate for legal operations employees is $50.

• A recapture rate is applied to all of the productivity benefits. The TEI methodology incorporates the assumption that a group of employees who experience a productivity benefit will dedicate unlocked productivity to additional work and a portion to nonwork. For these productivity benefits, three-quarters of the productivity will go toward additional work and one-quarter will go toward employees having longer breaks and not attempting to take on invoice work with spare time, qualitatively making for improved employee experience.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:

• The annual number of invoices received and time spent to review the invoices.

• The size of the team responsible for accruals and reports, as well as time spent on the work.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for employees involved with labor.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $106,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Highly supportive and responsive customer success team. Interviewees spoke highly of Brightflag’s support for operations with the platform. The director of legal operations at a healthcare organization said: “If I have a question for Brightflag, they respond immediately. They are so helpful, polite, and willing to work with you, even if it’s difficult to articulate your ask.”

At the SaaS organization, the legal operations manager had a pop-up that instructed users on how to create their own matters. After some time, they didn’t need that pop-up anymore, and after asking Brightflag customer success to remove it, the pop-up was removed within 24 hours. In another example, the legal operations manager made a last-minute request to update an invoice as paid on a specific date at the end of quarter, and the task was completed within 10 minutes of submitting the request.

Beyond quick fixes, the customer success team listened to interviewees on larger requests for help. The legal operations manager said: “Our customer success manager gave us a broad overview of some of our metrics, broad strokes of what we’ve seen in Brightflag. We asked her to put the numbers together in a different way to present to legal leadership, and she did that for us. We could have done that work, but it would have taken a lot of time, so it was a huge help to us in articulating the value of Brightflag to the rest of my leadership team.”

• Quick and straightforward implementation process. Deployment of Brightflag at interviewees’ organizations was completed quickly and faster than expected. The senior director and legal chief of staff at a SaaS organization said: “We implemented Brightflag in about 40 days. With other solutions, we were looking at what would have taken between three to six months, so that was a big factor for us.”

Support from Brightflag’s customer success team also ensured that the process went smoothly. The group head of legal operations at a telecom organization said: “It was a collaborative exercise with the Brightflag implementation team. They were very good, really knowledgeable and supportive.”

Internal prep work to support implementation at the interviewees’ organizations was light as well. Interviewees shared that they only had a few hours of work to handle each week. If there were any requests for information, the Brightflag customer success team helped them to find it. The director of legal operations at a healthcare organization said: “They would email a to-do list for the week, and if you didn’t fulfill it or couldn’t find information, they would follow up asking how they can help. It made it very easy to get the information they needed to set up our system.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are scenarios in which a customer might implement Brightflag and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Taking advantage of the Ask Brightflag feature, built on Brightflag’s AI foundation, to streamline operations. Interviewees were still in the early stages of leveraging for Brightflag’s genAI assistant Ask Brightflag, but they had found it useful when called upon. The legal operations manager at a SaaS organization queried Ask Brightflag to provide comparison data on year-over-year quarterly spend, and it quickly provided the answer. Other uses included prompting Ask Brightflag to find what their organization paid for a specific attorney and their share of total spend for the calendar year. These uses helped interviewees to avoid time spent running reports to find information.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).