Rise & rise of the flexible lawyer

The current and upcoming generations of lawyers and paralegals are also taking advantage of opportunities to retain control over their working lives by signing up with the flexible working company.

Flex Legal, which began in 2016 with the launch of a tech platform matching law students to paralegal work in law firms and in-house legal departments, now has more than 6,000 lawyers, paralegals, trainees and company secretaries on its books.

The company says it can have a candidate shortlist ready in 24 hours. Once signed up and vetted, lawyers and paralegals are passed suitable roles which they can accept or reject.

The process benefits both sides—firms and legal departments can quickly and easily scale up their teams, while Flex Legal professionals retain control over their working lives, enjoy a better work-life balance and have access to a wide range of opportunities.

Leigh Day, for example, approached Flex Legal for help scaling up its litigation paralegal teams in Manchester and Leeds two years ago. The work involved supporting document drafting and client liaison through interviews and instruction-taking.

One of the paralegals hired for the contract, Eddy Ng, says their experience with Flex Legal has been ‘really fruitful and beneficial… From signing up to the platform to waiting for roles, the process has been fast and transparent’.

Flex Legal founder Mary Bonsor, a former commercial property litigation solicitor at Winckworth Sherwood, was working flat-out to meet a deadline back in 2016 when she looked out her office window at a group of law students on the street below.

‘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,’ she recalls.

‘Suddenly, the idea for Flex Legal was born.’