ConflictGraph

Idea

ConflictGraph runs the related-entity conflict check enterprise firms have and small firms don't, syncing with the practice-management tool they already use. It is an AI add-on that checks new clients and matters against a firm's existing roster for corporate subsidiaries, common officers, family ties, and prior opposing parties, not just matching contacts. It imports from Clio, MyCase, or PracticePanther by CSV, flags real related-entity conflicts that keyword search misses, and produces a timestamped audit log a firm can point to if a conflict is ever challenged.

Market gap

Solo and small firms either skip conflict checks or run them by keyword-searching a flat contact list in a spreadsheet or their practice-management tool. That catches an exact name match. It does not catch a new client that is a subsidiary of an existing client, shares an officer with an adverse party, or is a family member of someone the firm already represents. The tools that can see that (Intapp Conflicts, Litera) are built and priced for AmLaw 200 firms, with multi-thousand-dollar annual contracts and an IT lift small firms cannot justify. Intapp's own content describes the related-entity and corporate-tree gap as exactly what separates enterprise tooling from the practice-management suites small firms actually use.

Timing is right now for two reasons. ABA Model Rule 1.10(e) creates an affirmative duty for firms to have reasonable procedures in place to detect conflicts, not just react to them. And 2025-2026 has brought a wave of AI-native small-firm legal tools (LexVault, Deelo) that validates small firms will now pay for AI-assisted intake and conflict workflows, but none of the current entrants focus specifically on closing the related-entity gap. They bundle a shallow check inside a broader product.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up:

• About 1.37 million active US lawyers, roughly 75 percent in private practice, so about 1.03 million lawyers in private practice (American Bar Association, 2023 Solo and Small Firm TechReport).
• 49 percent of private-practice lawyers are solo (about 505,000 solo firms) and about 20 percent work in firms of 2 to 10 lawyers (about 205,000 lawyers, roughly 51,000 firms at an average of 4 lawyers per firm) (Embroker, Solo Law Firm Statistics 2025, compiling ABA and industry data).
• Total addressable firms: roughly 556,000.
• Assumed ACV: $1,200 per year (about $100 per month, the Professional tier below, the price point where the related-entity wedge is on).
• TAM = 556,000 firms x $1,200 = approximately $667 million per year.

SAM: restrict to firms in conflict-prone practice areas (business and corporate, litigation, real estate, trusts and estates), estimated at 55 percent of the base, about 306,000 firms x $1,200 = approximately $367 million per year.

SOM: a realistic 2-year capture for a 3-person team selling through content and practice-management-tool marketplace listings: 1,000 to 1,500 firms at $1,200 to $1,800 ACV, or roughly $1.2 million to $2.7 million ARR.

Monetization strategy

B2B SaaS, billed monthly per firm with a seat cap per tier. The firm's managing partner or office administrator pays. It is sticky because the audit-log history becomes the record a firm points to in a bar complaint or malpractice defense: once a firm has a year of documented checks, ripping the tool out means losing that compliance trail.

Pricing strategy

• Starter, $79 per month: 1 to 3 users, named plus fuzzy-variant matching, 500 active contacts. The low-friction entry point that still beats a spreadsheet.
• Professional (anchor), $149 per month: up to 10 users, full corporate-tree and shared-officer search, unlimited checks, timestamped audit-log export for bar compliance. This is the anchor because it is where the related-entity wedge, the actual differentiator, turns on.
• Firm, $299 per month: up to 25 users, priority public-records refresh, CSV batch sync across the whole roster.

Lead magnet

A free one-time Conflict Exposure Audit. A firm uploads a CSV export of its client list, ConflictGraph runs it against public corporate-registry data, and the firm gets back a PDF report showing likely undetected related-entity conflicts already sitting in their roster (for example, two existing clients that share a corporate officer). It proves the gap exists before anyone signs up, and it upsells naturally into ongoing monitoring.

Competitors

• Intapp Conflicts and Litera (Prosperoware): the enterprise standard. Full related-entity and corporate-tree search with automated risk scoring, but priced and built for AmLaw 200 firms, multi-thousand-dollar annual contracts, and a real IT deployment lift.
• Clio Manage, MyCase, CosmoLex, PracticePanther: general practice-management suites that bundle a basic named-contact conflict search. No corporate-tree or related-party detection, and former clients from a prior system often never get imported at all.
• RTG Conflicts: a free add-on for RTG Bills Online subscribers. Simple name-based search only, no related-entity layer.
• LexVault: a new (2026) AI document-intelligence platform for small firms, priced $99 to $899 per month flat per firm. Conflict checking is one feature inside a broader semantic-search, matter-management, and drafting product, not a dedicated related-entity engine.
• Deelo: a small-firm all-in-one legal operating system at $19 per seat per month. Conflict-check prep is available as a build-your-own no-code AI agent inside the broader platform, not a purpose-built related-entity search.

What competitors offer now

Enterprise tools (Intapp, Litera) do related-entity search well but require an enterprise sales process and IT integration that a 1 to 10 lawyer firm will never go through. Practice-management suites (Clio, MyCase, CosmoLex, PracticePanther) ship conflict checking as an afterthought: a keyword match against whatever contacts happen to be in the system, with no corporate-registry enrichment and spotty import of historical clients. The new AI-native small-firm entrants (LexVault, Deelo) are building broad intake and drafting platforms where conflict checking is a minor feature, not the product, so none of them are pushing depth on the related-entity layer specifically.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Do one thing well instead of bundling it shallow inside something bigger. ConflictGraph is a single-purpose related-entity and corporate-tree conflict engine that plugs into whatever practice-management tool a small firm already uses, by CSV or API import, instead of asking the firm to migrate anything. That focus lets it charge under $150 a month for depth that otherwise requires an AmLaw-200 contract. Distribution runs through the exact channel where the gap already gets named out loud: state bar CLE content on Model Rule 1.10(e) compliance, and listings inside the Clio, MyCase, and PracticePanther app marketplaces where firms already look for add-ons to their existing system.