Poppy Legal

In legal tech, buzz often follows the flashiest copilots or contract tools. But the question that keeps in-house teams up at night isn’t “What’s the next AI breakthrough?” — it’s “Where is our money going?”

Poppy Legal was built to answer that question.

Founded by former GC Jesse Soslow, Poppy Legal tackles one of the most universal and overlooked problems in legal operations: managing outside counsel spend. Not just line-by-line invoice review, but real-time insights, rate change detection, AI-generated budget summaries, and even pre-negotiation strategy.

And here’s the twist: it’s not adversarial. Poppy isn’t about catching law firms off guard. It’s about making data transparent, conversations smarter, and legal departments more confident when the CFO comes knocking.

Built by the People Who Used to Sweat the Budget

Before founding Poppy, Soslow was a GC doing exactly what most GCs do — manually reviewing invoices, trying to make sense of discounts and deviations, and explaining legal spend to non-legal executives. It wasn’t the complexity that was the issue. It was the lack of clarity.

“When we started speaking with GCs about the concept,” Soslow said, “we realized most weren’t obsessed with invoice details. They wanted to feel confident in front of their CEO or board that they were spending wisely—and to stop wasting hours tracking it all manually.”

That shift — from oversight to strategy — is exactly what drove Poppy’s expansion from invoice auditing into broader analytics and planning. It’s now a full visibility platform, not just a cleanup tool.

Fast Setup, Full Clarity

Where other legal ops platforms push sprawling dashboards and custom integrations, Poppy keeps it lean. You can upload your invoices directly, or ask law firms to send them in. The AI handles the rest: parsing data, categorizing matters, and identifying anomalies.

No timekeeper mapping. No matter code setup. Just answers.

That simplicity isn’t accidental. As Soslow explained, “We let our system figure out as much as it can without intervention. For users with more complex workflows, we make those features optional. You can go deeper if needed—but the core experience is turnkey.”

It’s an approach that makes Poppy work just as well for solo GCs as it does for legal teams with 30 people and $30 million in annual spend.

Not Just Oversight—Insight

So what does the platform actually catch?

• Unannounced rate increases

• Billing anomalies (e.g. work billed under a different partner)

• Missing discounts or pre-negotiated terms

• Timekeeper trends across firms

• Budget overruns across matters

And importantly: recommendations.

Poppy doesn’t just raise flags. It surfaces suggestions: when to shift to AFAs, where to consolidate work, and which staffing patterns may be hurting your efficiency.

“Our customers tell us they used to rely on gut feelings or spend hours digging through old invoices,” Soslow said. “Now they show up to rate negotiations with data-backed insights — and confidence.”

Trust, Not Tension

Poppy is not built to embarrass your outside counsel.

It’s designed to help legal teams and law firms work better together. Its issue-tracking tools, approval flows, and matter-level reports are as much about transparency as they are about accountability.

“As Jesse put it: ‘Like any relationship, the one between legal teams and firms is strongest when communication is clear and proactive. We help surface patterns that enable better conversations—not just tougher ones.’”

An AI On-Ramp for Legal Departments

One reason Poppy stands out is that it’s practical. It’s not asking lawyers to rethink how they work. It’s solving a high-friction, low-glamour problem — and doing it with near-zero ramp-up.

In fact, spend management might be one of the safest places to experiment with legal AI. There’s little downside risk, and the upside is immediate: cleaner data, sharper decisions, and better outcomes in negotiations.

“As Soslow explained, ‘Poppy never takes action without human confirmation. But over time, as AI trust increases, we’ll allow users to opt into automation—like flagging issues or requesting clarifications. Because in this space, the stakes are low, but the impact is high.’

What’s Next?

Poppy’s roadmap includes broader law firm relationship metrics and deeper predictive analytics. But its core mission won’t change: give legal departments a clear picture of where their budget is going and how to use it better.

In a world where legal tech often over-promises and under-delivers, Poppy is refreshingly grounded.

Not a chatbot. Not a contract copilot. Just a smart, transparent, AI-powered microscope for one of the most important pieces of the legal puzzle: how you spend, why you spend, and whether it’s worth it.