“Flex Legal was born in 2016 with a clear mission: to help provide opportunities to enhance careers and change lives.”

Mary Bonsor, Founder

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About Flex Legal

Flex Legal was born in 2016 with a clear mission: to help provide opportunities to enhance careers and change lives.

This mission is still core to what we do today however we have gone two steps further in how we do this.

We now support qualified lawyers work in a different way, ensuring that we keep incredible talent within the legal sector and driving more flexible working practises and allow for more work/life balance.

We are also driving forward the diversity agenda, through our Flex trainee programme by helping candidates from a social mobility background qualify under the SQE and having a direct input into who qualifies into our profession and breaking down barriers.

In the press

Our Values

The three words we live by at Flex Legal

Human

We purposefully connect people to create an inclusive community where everybody thrives. We love celebrating each other’s success and we will work collaboratively for the better good. We empathise with clients and always try to find solutions. We care about you.

Trusted

We appreciate that trust is earned, but we aim to partner with you so that you come back to us again and again. We want to get to know you, and will always try to create the best outcomes for both our clients and our candidates; and internally, we work together as a team.

Entrepreneurial

We are always wanting to improve, what we do, how we do it, and the impact we are having. We are forward looking and progressive. We are not afraid of giving something a go and we are always looking for a better way, even if this is a small step.

How it began

The Flex Legal Story

2016 - Law Students and Paralegals

"I remember walking around the city while I was doing the GDL and the LPC, desperate for work. Eventually, I managed to find work experience as a secretary for a shipping arbitrator, but it wasn’t easy to get there.

Fast forward a few years and I was a qualified solicitor working in litigation. I was facing an imminent court deadline with forty huge bundles to make. I remember sitting at my desk and looking out of the window, and seeing a group of Kaplan law students exactly where I had been a few years ago. I knew from experience that those students would have jumped at the chance to get legal work experience, and I knew associates like myself were desperate for their help. Suddenly, the idea for Flex Legal was born."

Shortly after, Mary met James, an experienced software developer, and knew he could help make her dream a reality. James become Co-Founder of Flex and they began working together on a tech platform that could connect law students to law firms and in-house teams as efficiently as possible. They analysed what was taking too long in traditional recruitment, and how they could use tech to make it easier.

Hands hover above a keyboard, which itself is attached to a laptop. A coffee sits off to one side, as the screen displays Flex Legal's application process. It seems easy - almost too easy.

2019 - The launch of Flex lawyers

After a successful first three years, Mary and James shifted Flex's focus from solely providing paralegal opportunities, and began to work on onboarding interim lawyers onto our platform too. Determined to tackle the industry’s notoriously poor work/life balance, Flex aims to give lawyers the opportunity to take back control of their career through flexible, interim work.

Flex Trainees - all cohorts October 2023

2021 - The creation of our groundbreaking SQE social mobility training scheme, Flex Trainee

In 2021, after learning about the key changes that the new SQE route would bring to the legal industry, Mary came up with the idea for Flex Trainee, an SQE training scheme designed to help socially mobile aspiring lawyers break into law.

Flex Trainee helps us to take our mission to make the legal industry more diverse, inclusive, and flexible for all a step further. A scheme which has been created to support talented, aspiring lawyers gain Qualifying Work Experience through the new SQE route.

To date, we are proud to have placed over 60 trainees within the in-house legal teams of organisations such as Vodafone, ASOS, Trustpilot, The Crown Estate and Diageo.

2024 - Flex Legal acquired by Mishcon de Reya LLP

In January 2024, Flex Legal was acquired by the London-based international law firm, Mishcon de Reya. Flex will continue to operate entirely autonomously, and no immediate changes will take place to the services we provide or the work we do with our clients.

Flex Legal is Mishcon de Reya's first investment in the alternative legal services market, and Nick West and Neville Eisenberg of Mishcon have joined our board.

With the full might of Mishcon de Reya at our back, we intend to complete our mission to become the biggest and best alternative legal resourcing company out there, and enabling and inspiring the legal workforce of the future.

“Flex Legal was born in 2016 with a clear mission: to help provide opportunities to enhance careers and change lives.”

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