Legaltech company Brightflag has raised $28mn from investors as it seeks to expand its international footprint and fund further product innovation.

Brightflag – which provides AI-powered legal spend and matter management tech to in-house teams – currently has 90 employees spread across Dublin, New York and Sydney, with the company expected to add 60 new jobs globally by the end of next year. Growth investors One Peak led the deal, with existing investors Sands Capital Ventures and Frontline Ventures also taking part in the transaction.

Humber de Liedekerke, managing partner of One Peak, said: “We see enormous potential in accelerating digital transformation within the legal department and redefining its role from cost centre to essential business partner.”

A recent Gartner study found that corporate legal departments are increasingly tracking metrics around external legal spend, with the coronavirus pandemic exposing gaps in their technology adoption rates.

Ian Nolan, CEO and co-founder of Brightflag, said: “For the second time in the last 15 years, companies are grappling with the legal and financial implications of a global recession. Brightflag is providing corporate legal departments with unparalleled visibility into their operations as they work to maximise the strategic value of their spending.”

Some of the in-house teams that are using Brightflag’s tech include Dropbox, Volvo and AccuWeather.

Dan Cook, VP of legal at Dropbox, said: “Brightflag has transformed the way we manage our legal spend. We’ve automated away several time-consuming processes [and] gained complete visibility into how we’re tracking against budget.”

Earlier this week, the UK named the first five legaltech startups signed up to a new government-backed regulatory sandbox to help accelerate digital transformation in the legal sector. The successful firms are Amplifi, Clause, ClauseMatch, The Deep Tech Dispute Resolution Lab and Legal Utopia.

Last month, legaltech giant Epiq acquired legal operations consultancy Hyperion Global Partners as part of a move to expand its legal transformation business, complementing its legal document processing, records management, ediscovery and information governance technology and services offering.

That followed a deal earlier in November that saw legaltech developer BigHand snap up UK-based resource management company Mason & Cook, which provides resource planning software and strategic consulting on work allocation matters.