F-LEX to Flex Legal - why we changed our brand

As you may know, we get a lot of questions about how our name is pronounced. Is it F-dash-lex? Just Flex? Or is it even Ef-Lecks? Whilst this is admittedly a great conversation starter, we’ve decided that clarity over our name and our brand is incredibly important. So after a lot of discussion, tears, more discussion, and even more tears, we’ve made the decision to change our name from F-LEX to Flex Legal.

It might seem small, but it’s a huge difference to us. Flex Legal reflects more of what we’re humbly trying to do. Flex represents the future of flexible working - it’s where we’re going. Legal represents the traditional legal industry - it’s where we’ve come from.

We recently celebrated our fourth birthday at Flex HQ. The company has come a long way in those four years - from a team of only 2 to a fully operational working machine of 25. It was right to look back at where we had come from, but it is also right to figure out where we wanted to go. We wanted to find the “bigger picture” together.

We got everyone together and spent a day discussing the future with the team. We had some great conversations, and worked together to figure out where we wanted to go. Our new brand was born from this conversation. We love the legal industry, but we genuinely want to see it improve. Just as we looked back at F-LEX, we also looked forward to Flex Legal. We want the legal industry to see the bigger picture too.

Our work to date has been heavily focused on two things. The first was helping law graduates find paralegal work experience. The second was helping legal teams easily scale up during peaks of work. Both of these are incredibly important to us, and they always will be. Connecting those dots to benefit both law graduates and legal teams is what we’re passionate about.

But we’re setting our sights higher. There’s more we want to transform.

Anyone who has worked in the legal industry knows how challenging it can be, and there’s terrifying statistics that reflect this. Junior lawyers are worked so hard that 83% are having mental health problems. Horror stories about poor diversity and inclusion are all too common. Lawyers are leaving the profession they’ve spent years training for in droves. As legal professionals, these are pressures we know firsthand. Something is clearly wrong, and it’s something we want to fix.

We believe in a solution that emphasises skills + flexibility. We believe in transforming the legal industry we care so passionately about. We believe in a working world where you are empowered to choose:

• When you work
• Where you work
• How you work
• Who you work for
• What you work on

Our mission is to redesign the way we work so we are empowered to make these smarter life / work choices.

This obviously marks a huge increase in the scope of our ambition. Having a mission statement is one thing, but delivering it is another. To help us implement this, we believe in acting by our three core values which are based on the feedback that we often receive from our clients:

• We are Human
• We are Super Responsive
• We are Innovative

As a company that’s changed and grown a lot in the last four years, we’re committed to looking ahead to where we can improve next. Changing our name and our branding from F-LEX to Flex Legal feels like the right way to reflect this bigger, bolder, and more ambitious mission statement.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us get where we are over the last four years. We couldn’t have done it without you, and hope you’ll all come along for the next chapter in our journey!