I loved being a lawyer and I love the legal industry. I want to see our industry become more inclusive and more agile so we can make smarter life/work choices.

Mary, Founder

hello

About Flex Legal

Flex Legal is redesigning the way the legal sector works. We connect top interim talent with the UK’s best legal teams, and pair socially-mobile SQE trainees with the industry’s most forward-thinking organisations.
Over the last six years, over 6,000 lawyers and paralegals have joined our award-winning online platform, allowing us to support hundreds of clients to embrace the benefits of flexible on-demand resourcing.
Launched in 2021, 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 from historically underrepresented backgrounds qualify in-house through the new SQE route.
Flex Legal - Sixth Birthday
Who we are

Our purpose, mission & values

At Flex Legal, we inspire and enable the legal workforce of the future. We are passionate about connecting great people to the best opportunities, so that everybody can thrive. Since launching in 2016, we have experienced rapid growth and evolution. So much so that we have updated our values to reflect the Flex of today. Our new values represent:
  • How we focus on great relationships with clients, lawyers, paralegals and trainees.
  • How we strive to build an inclusive, diverse and socially mobile community.
  • How trust is earned by going the extra mile to deliver results.
Human

We purposefully connect people to create an inclusive community where everybody thrives.

Trusted

We appreciate trust is earned - the quality and effectiveness of our work ensures great outcomes for all of our partners.

Entrepreneurial

We are forward-looking and progressive, constantly exploring and innovating to support tomorrow’s legal workforce.

Mary Bonsor, CEO of Flex Legal
How it began

The Flex Legal Story

2016 - Mary's vision

"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."
James Moore

2016 - Mary meets software developer, James Moore

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.

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 qualify in-house through the new SQE route.
To date, we are proud to have placed over 50 trainees within the in-house legal teams of organisations such as Vodafone, ASOS, Trustpilot, The Crown Estate and Diageo.
Mary Bonsor, Flex Legal Founder, and James Lewindon, Flex Legal Founder

2023 - Appointment of our new CEO, James Lewindon

After leading Flex for 7 years, Mary decided to take a step back and appointed James Lewindon as CEO in her place, following a year-long search. James is a former partner of Eversheds Sutherland, and was Head of Legal Resourcing at their alternative legal services division, Konexo UK.
Mary continues to be heavily involved with Flex in her new position as Founder, and will continue to focus on incubating new ideas and business offerings for Flex's future. With James on board, who has an unbelievable track record, we hope that Flex's growth will continue to accelerate even further.
Regarding his appointment as Flex CEO, James said: “I have long admired Flex Legal and am really delighted to join the fantastic team. As the legal market evolves, creating a diverse, inclusive, and representative industry is essential to its relevance and future success. I am greatly looking forward to driving Flex Legal’s agenda forwards, and fostering exciting changes across the entire legal space.”
Flex Legal on the Flexi-job apprenticeship register

2023 - Flex listed as only legal organisation on the Flexi-job Apprenticeship Register

During July 2023, the Flex Trainee underwent its first ever evolution, and the scheme was expanded into three distinct routes: Flex Trainee, Flex Apprentice, and Flex Talent Development (find out more on our Flex Trainee page).
On the back of this new development, we were absolutely delighted to be listed as the only legal organisation on the Flexi-job Apprenticeship Register. This means that we have officially been recognised by the Department for Education as the only legal organisation in the UK to 'recruit and employ apprentices and arrange placements with a variety of host businesses for the duration of an apprenticeship'.

Flex's Future

Today, Flex Legal is an award-winning platform with a huge roster of clients, including magic circle law firms and many FTSE 100 in-house legal teams. We have over 5,000 paralegals on our platform, 500+ lawyers and over 50 socially mobile trainees. We have very ambitious plans to continue on our mission to redesign the way legal teams work, and make the legal industry more inclusive and accessible for everyone.
Awards
Flex in stats

The journey so far

Flex Trainee Cohort 4
We are proud of everything the Flex team has achieved through working closely with our clients, paralegals, lawyers and trainees to create incredible, life-changing opportunities. Here are some of our highlights so far:
  • 5,000+ paralegals
  • 500+ lawyers
  • 300+ law graduates helped to obtain training contracts
  • 350+ clients
  • 50 Flex Trainees placed with top in-house legal teams
Flex's ethos

Our commitment to ESG

Flex Trainee Cohort 2
Diversity and inclusion are not just corporate buzz words – they are core tenets of Flex Legal’s work.
We love the legal industry. With that love comes a desire to see it improve and be more diverse, more inclusive, and more representative of the society it serves. This is why Flex factors social mobility into everything we do, and here are just some of the ways we’re doing just that:
  • Our platform is unbelievably diverse, with lawyers, trainees, and paralegals from a huge range of social and academic backgrounds, not just Russell Group universities.
  • We work directly with FTSE250 organisations to improve their diversity through our Flex Trainee scheme.
  • We have ongoing partnerships and donations to leading social mobility charities, such as STRIVE and the Social Mobility Business Partnership.
  • Our QWE Journal is entirely free to use - SRA-complaint, audit-proof, and the first tool of its kind to market.
  • We run social-mobility initiatives all year round, including our Commercial Development Scheme, which has seen us welcome 40+ aspiring solicitors into our HQ team, and the yearly Diageo internship scheme.
  • We run monthly networking events to facilitate junior industry connections, and produce instructional reports for senior industry figures to further increase inclusivity in their teams.
  • And last, but not least, all of our Flex merch is entirely sustainable.
In the press