2025 wasn’t just another year for the legal industry. It was a year of rapid change, accelerating complexity, tighter budgets, and growing pressure to deliver more with less. Legal leaders everywhere faced the same question: How do we stay ahead without sacrificing quality or control?

This round-up isn’t about Elevate. It’s about what mattered to you and how we partnered to solve those challenges. Here are the moments that defined the year and offer lessons for 2026.

Number Five: Culture That Powered Performance

If 2025 had a theme, it might be ‘culture matters’. Elevate earned the Great Place to Work certification across the UK, US, India, and the Philippines, and then added UK honours for Development, for Women, and for Consulting and Professional Services.

Newsweek also named Elevate one of America’s Greatest Workplaces in Professional Services. And because happy teams make happy customers, our NPS rose by seven points.

Number Four: Global Rankings and Expert Recognition

Some traditions are worth keeping.

For the tenth year in a row, Elevate secured Band 1 rankings from Chambers in every eligible NewLaw category: CLM, Flexible Legal Staffing, and Litigation Services, making it the only law company to achieve top rankings. Chambers also recognised our eDiscovery work in the Litigation Support 2025 Guide, marking it the fourth Chambers win of the year.

IAM added to this trajectory by naming our intellectual property experts, Anant Kataria, Tarun Bansal, Hanns Hallesius, and Christian Gordon Pullar among the world’s leading IP strategists. Their repeated presence on the Strategy 300 list speaks to the depth and consistency of our global IP standing.

In June this year, Financial Times recognised Elevate’s Chairman and CEO, Liam Brown, as one of the ‘Top 20 Market Shapers’ in the global legal industry over the past two decades. This honour reflects Liam’s impact and thought leadership in transforming legal services worldwide.

Number Three: Partnerships Driving Innovation

Partnerships played a major role in 2025.

Elevate joined forces with IntelAgree and Malbek, two AI-powered CLM platforms, to help law departments streamline contracting with greater speed, clarity, and long-term value. Backed by Elevate’s CLM experts, these alliances strengthened implementation quality and improved adoption across contracting functions.

One standout collaboration came with Vinted, Europe’s leading secondhand fashion marketplace. Working alongside Ironclad, Elevate helped Vinted modernise its contract management during a period of rapid growth. The rollout went live in five months, onboarded 120 users across 12 workflows, and integrated key business systems. The result was a faster, more intuitive contracting experience along with a scalable framework for future growth.

Number Two: Technology Leadership

One of our key additions this year is the AI Maturity Model, a framework that helps law departments and law firms identify where AI best fits, what delivers the greatest value, and how to implement safely and sustainably to boost productivity, quality, and impact.

Elevate advanced its technology leadership this year with three new Relativity competencies: Technology Firm, Boutique Law Firm, and Data Migration. These recognitions span data management and review workflows to litigation support and complex migrations, powered by global follow-the-sun operations and expanded analytics and generative AI services.

And with that, the year’s defining milestone takes the top spot.

Number One: Strategic Growth and Global Expansion

The year set its direction early with a major expansion in global IP capability as Sagacious IP became part of Elevate. The acquisition added over 500 IP experts with technical expertise and award-winning patent search capabilities, including co-founders Anant Kataria and Tarun Bansal, now part of the Executive Leadership Team at Elevate.

The year’s strategic momentum continued in October with the acquisition of Legadex, a Netherlands-based law company known for its tech-enabled legal operations and managed services. The integration strengthened Elevate’s presence in legal service delivery across Europe while co-founders Hans Martijn Roos and Luc van Daele joined the Executive Leadership Team at Elevate.

The Path Forward

2025 was all about one thing: empowering legal teams to deliver outcomes. Each milestone this year, from acquisitions to technology innovations, centred on enabling legal functions manage complexity and drive results.

In 2026, we’ll continue to focus on solving the problems that shape modern legal operations and reinforcing the foundations that help organisations move faster and operate with confidence. Here’s to 2026, onward!