Mary Bonsor: Founding, Scaling & Exiting a purpose-driven LegalTech with Flex Legal

“It’s really important to sell your business when there’s still a lot of growth left. You really shouldn’t be looking to sell it at its absolute peak.” In today’s 40 Minute Mentor episode, we’re joined by Mary Bonsor, Founder of Flex Legal, a bespoke online platform created to connect law students with law firms and in-house legal teams on a flexible on-demand basis. Mary has been on an incredible journey from Lawyer to LegalTech Entrepreneur, driving diversity and social mobility with Flex Legal. Alongside her successful build of Flex Legal to exit, Mary has been named Management Today’s 35 under 35, won Entrepreneur of the Year at the Women in Law Awards and was also an Entrepreneurship category winner at the European Women of Legal Tech Awards. In today’s episode, we’ll dive into her journey of building Flex Legal, all the lessons she learned along the way and her step away from the CEO role through her exit, 7 years into the journey. Episode Chapters: ➡️ Becoming a lawyer & the initial idea for Flex Legal [07:00] ➡️ Entrepreneurship - a behaviour or a skill you can learn? [09:00] ➡️ From concept to business - the evolution of Flex Legal [14:00] ➡️ Find out more about Leadership Unleashed [15:00] ➡️ Transitioning from Lawyer to Tech Founder [17:15] ➡️ Finding Product-Market-Fit & navigating pivots [20:15] ➡️ Hiring lessons [28:15] ➡️ Navigating Covid & the route to exit [33:00] ➡️ Transitioning out of the CEO role [35:30] ➡️ Social Mobility in the Legal space [38:15] ⛳ Helpful links: ➡️ Connect with Mary on LinkedIn ➡️ Find out more about Flex Legal 🔔Find out more about today’s sponsors Today’s episode is brought to you by the Leadership Unleashed Open Cohorts. Leadership Unleashed Open Cohort is your chance to join a diverse cohort of leaders from different organisations, industries, and parts of the world to build the most critical behaviours and transform into a high performer. Split into seven remote workshops, the Open Cohort follows a coaching-led approach where you’ll be actively involved and turn your learnings into habits in your day-to-day. To find out more about the programme and how you can sign up for the next cohort starting in January, get in touch with Logan and Anouk at sayhello@unleashed.company ⭐Enjoyed this episode?⭐️ Keep up to date with all our latest episodes, by hitting the subscribe button on your favourite podcast platform. And for any feedback on what you enjoy the most and ideas on what we can do to make 40 Minute Mentor even better, please leave us a review at https://ratethispodcast.com/40mm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices