February 13, 2023

Every year, my co-leader Jessica and I like to set the focus for the year with an overarching management philosophy. Our management philosophy for 2022 could be summed up as “growth with intention.” Growth meant leveraging the investments we made in 2021 to support continued strong growth into 2022. Intention meant maintaining our collaborative and spirited culture, our high-touch approach with clients and attorneys, and keeping the special things about Paragon special.

This philosophy guides us, along with our values, and keeps us focused. This focus was key as 2022 provided some twists and turns as the macroeconomic environment quickly shifted and created uncertainty for many.

At our 10th Annual All Hands meeting in November, Paula Davis of the Stress & Resilience Institute shared that resilience is perseverance with purpose. It is a skillset that can be developed and honed, and like any skill, it takes practice.

And when 2022 threw the economy for a loop, we got practice. Through that practice, Paragon grew double-digits thanks to the resilience, perseverance, and dedication of our tremendous corporate team, attorney team, and clients. The challenges of the year were met by our team with heart and resilience. And those themes became foundational to the “intention” with which we navigated 2022.

With that heart and resilience, we were able to accomplish a lot to be proud of in 2022. One thing we are particularly proud of is the launch of our DEI Career Connect program. This program connects law school grads with a passion for diversity to great Paragon clients for a 1-year in-house opportunity, kicking off the program with two of our incredible Bay area tech partners. We also saw record highs in the number of engagements, attorneys, and clients we support. We expanded into 30 states, and counting. We added 3 invaluable team members to our corporate team, and we got our entire corporate team together in-person for the first time in 2 years!

We enter 2023 with great excitement and optimism for what’s to come. Flexible legal talent has never been more relevant to address the challenges faced by in-house legal departments today, as they grapple with limited resources, growing workloads, stretched team members, and budget pressures.

We stand ready to fulfill our Why – to create opportunity and to have a meaningful impact on the lives of our employees and on the lives of our clients. We stand ready to meet any challenge with heart and resilience.

This year we will be making significant strategic investments in the business – to expand our attorney base and geographic reach in order to better serve our clients and teams across the US, and to remain laser focused on being a place that people truly want to work for and work with.

We look forward to being a part of your success in 2023 and to being the best client partner we can be.

Trista Engel
CEO, Paragon Legal