Twenty years ago, Paragon was built around a simple idea: that attorneys and in-house teams both needed more flexibility than the traditional model allowed.
As we begin our 20th year, it’s clear that what has changed is the stakes—flexibility used to be a convenience, now it’s a competitive condition.
2025 confirmed this. We expanded our client base, deepened existing relationships, and had our strongest year in the company’s history. But what made 2025 genuinely instructive wasn’t just our own results but how clearly our experience reflected what was happening inside legal departments across the country.
Because we work alongside in-house leaders every day, we experience shifts in real time. The work coming in, the expertise clients prioritized, and the questions they asked all told a consistent story of where the legal industry is heading.
Four themes stand out.
Regulatory volatility wasn’t just a headline—it was the norm.
Our own conversations and demand patterns reflected that reality. A tariff-related slowdown in early spring gave way to some of the strongest demand we’ve ever seen, including multiple months of record client activity and the strongest finish to a year in our history.
What drove the acceleration wasn’t a return to stability, it was the opposite. Legal teams were recalibrating in real time – adjusting scope, pivoting priorities, absorbing regulatory change as it happened—and turning to flexible capacity to match needs as conditions shifted.
Trade compliance demand surged to levels we hadn’t seen before. Projects that began as steady-state support evolved into urgent regulatory matters.
The teams that handled this best weren’t necessarily the largest or best resourced, they were the ones ready to flex.
Budgets largely held steady or increased in 2025, but that didn’t reduce pressure—it shifted it. The pressure to show value came into sharp focus.
Yes, workloads expanded, regulatory demands grew, and AI investments were required—so while legal leaders earned their budget, they were also expected to demonstrate the impact of that budget.
That dynamic shaped how we saw engagements move. Work accelerated when the value was clear, and extended when that value was demonstrated in practice.
It required legal teams to tell a credible internal story about impact while many still don’t have the metrics infrastructure to do that well—a gap we explored in our research report, Proving Legal’s Value: A Practical Guide to Metrics That Matter.
For Paragon, it meant results mattered. Our new client count grew by 26%, and a record number of projects extended beyond their original scope—both underscoring that growth in 2025 was earned on trust and measurable value.
Budget stability doesn’t ease pressure. It raises the bar.
If regulatory volatility shaped the external environment, AI shaped the internal one.
The pressure on legal teams to do something, anything, on AI intensified. Most teams were piloting tools while simultaneously managing their core workload.
Progress was real, but adoption and transformation aren’t the same thing, and the gap between them is where most teams still sit.
At Paragon, we invested heavily in embedding AI thoughtfully into our own workflows, prioritizing disciplined pilots with clear criteria on our goals and how we measure success. We invested in training for both our internal team and our attorney network, and our partnership with GC AI reinforced our commitment to helping clients navigate these same questions with AI-trained attorneys.
We also saw clients increasingly prioritize technological fluency in the attorneys they engaged.
If there’s a single thing that 2025 confirmed, it’s that flexibility is no longer a stopgap—it’s infrastructure.
Flexible legal talent became part of intentional capacity planning, helping teams absorb spikes, manage ebbs and flows, and pursue strategic initiatives without overextending headcount.
Instead of asking how to cover an immediate need, more teams asked how to architect capacity for what’s ahead.
This shift isn’t about resourcing alone. It reflects a broader portfolio mindset—one we explored in our report on Legal Portfolio Solutions, examining how efficiency, tech, risk, and talent connect.
We evolved alongside them, with deeper partnerships with both clients and talent, faster and more responsive internal systems, and a clearer focus on fit rather than just availability. That evolution mattered: Paragon’s new placements increased 20% year over year, and new client acquisition grew by more than 25%.
Legal teams saw the most impact when flexible talent was woven into how a team actually operates—not added at the edges.
Several of these patterns feel durable.
AI pressure will intensify, and the pace of change will accelerate. The question will shift from “Are you using AI?” to “How is it improving your team’s performance?”
Regulatory volatility will remain the baseline, and the advantage will go to teams designed to absorb disruption, not just respond to it.
Capacity will be designed with intention, not simply expanded in response to pressure. High-performing legal departments will increasingly blend permanent staff, flexible talent, outside counsel, and technology because the work demands it.
Legal’s strategic role will continue to expand. The most effective leaders will shape decisions, not just respond to them.
Across all of this, the throughline is design—building teams and systems that can absorb change and move the business forward.
Twenty years is a long time to stay focused on a single idea. But flexibility as a concept only matters as much as the judgment behind it—knowing when to hold, when to pivot, and what to build for.
What I saw in 2025, across our clients and across the profession, was a growing number of legal leaders operating at that level: thoughtful about design, honest about constraints, and serious about building teams that can actually move with the business. That’s the environment Paragon was made for, and the one I expect to see deepen in 2026.
Paragon was built around flexibility two decades ago, at a time when most people thought of it as a workaround. What 2025 made clear is that it’s a strategy.
The pace of change isn’t slowing, and neither is the opportunity to shape what comes next.
We’re ready for it.
Trista Engel
CEO, Paragon Legal
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