Dutch publishing company Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory has signed an agreement to acquire Brightflag, an Irish-founded and now New York-headquartered e-billing and matter management system provider. The acquisition is approximately €425m (£357m) in cash.
This appears to be a market share acquisition, which we’re told is intended to strengthen Wolters Kluwer’s Legal & Regulatory business among mid-size corporations in the U.S. and Europe. Wolters Kluwer has its own SaaS ELM Solutions but traditionally serves large corporations and their law firms.
This deal follows a record-breaking year of growth for Brightflag, which was founded in Ireland has 155 full-time employees, who will join Wolters Kluwer. It announced in December that 2024 was Brightflag’s best-ever year of growth. Highlights of the year included releasing generative AI capabilities with the launch of Ask Brightflag. The company said at the time that Ask Brightflag represents the future of how in-house teams will manage work and spend. Brightflag also launched GenAI feature Invoice Summaries in April.
Ian Nolan, CEO and co-Founder of Brightflag: “Since our founding, Brightflag has been committed to revolutionizing legal spend and matter management through AI-driven innovation. Wolters Kluwer shares our vision for leveraging advanced technology to enhance
legal operations, and we look forward to working with the Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory team to accelerate the future of legal solutions.”
Wolters Kluwer is publicly listed and released further financial information to the markets about the deal. In 2024, Brightflag revenues increased 36% to reach approximately €22 million (un-audited), and, as of April 2025, the company had attained €27m ARR (annual recurring revenue). Brightflag revenues are approximately 95% recurring in nature and approximately 60% from U.S. customers.
Wolters Kluwer has completed multiple acquisitions over the past few years, including Della (now Legisway Analyzer) at the end of 2022.