Why use flexible legal support?
Flexible legal support (or flexible legal resourcing) is an increasingly popular option for businesses. A lawyer is introduced on a temporary placement to work within your team. The purpose might be to cover an absence, to increase capacity during a busy period or to implement a project requiring additional skills.
This can be an attractive alternative to employing a new permanent in-house lawyer, on one hand, or engaging a law firm on the other. The first involves long term financial commitments and a time-consuming recruitment process. The second may not be viable where there is an extensive task for one person or an identifiable role to be filled. Flexible legal support is a cost-effective middle path.
In parallel with clients’ growing willingness to use this model, highly skilled lawyers are increasingly embracing it in their career. Clients may benefit greatly from the use of top tier flexible lawyers, who bring not only technical expertise but also the commerciality that such a career demands.
Our CEO Peter Workman describes the broadening context in which this model is used and sets out its advantages for in-house legal teams in more detail, in his article More for less.
How is Source distinctive?
We saw that there is an opportunity in the UK market for a firm which is a source of high calibre, reasonably priced flexible lawyers, serving clients ranging from PLCs to SMEs and focusing predominantly (but not exclusively) on experienced candidates for senior roles.
Source is a flexible legal support business established by the streamlined, partner-only law firm Temple Bright. Like Temple Bright, Source combines the best values of leading traditional law firms with an innovative model of service provision.

For our clients, this means:
- Selectivity and high standards. We put forward carefully vetted and selected lawyers from the Source Panel, whose background is in leading commercial firms or in-house legal teams and whose expertise is directly relevant to your requirements.
- Value for money and a PAYE model. We charge reasonable fees for the best people. To minimise bureaucracy and risk for you, we operate a PAYE-based model in which employed individuals are seconded to you and we manage tax and regulatory issues.
- Personal attention from our CEO. You will be guided by our CEO Peter Workman, a practising solicitor with a Magic Circle and Big Four background. Peter’s priority is to understand your needs and propose solutions and candidates which meet them.
- Support from a respected law firm. Source lawyers placed with you have access to Temple Bright’s resources and can (if you wish) obtain quick and confidential input in niche areas from the firm’s specialist partners, ahead of instructing the firm.
- A streamlined full service. Through our Panel of lawyers and our collaboration with Temple Bright, we can offer you a uniquely cost-effective, high quality one-stop-shop for in-house placements, project teams, and call-off support for discrete legal tasks.

Hybrid senior teams
High calibre flexible lawyers can be a valuable supplement to an in-house legal department. Trusted external advisers complete the picture. Source can collaborate with Temple Bright to put forward cohesive in-house/external teams, providing expertise across a broad range of practice areas. Unlike many such “hybrid” offerings, ours would involve external support exclusively from experienced partners. These partners charge at reasonable rates and work in the distinctive, client-friendly style summed up in Temple Bright’s four promises.
Source can therefore offer you the best legal support for an hour or a year, or anything between, tailored for your needs under our CEO Peter Workman’s personal guidance. Peter brings the benefit of his pragmatism, sound judgement and extensive experience of both commercial legal practice and the flexible support market. You can contact him confidentially using the form below.

Enquire about flexible lawyers
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FAQs
A flexible lawyer is a solicitor who has chosen to work on a “contract” basis, most commonly involving placements within in-house legal teams (but also potentially within smaller companies and professional firms). Those recruited to Source’s Panel have a background in City and leading regional law firms and may also have been employed in senior in-house roles. In most cases, but not always, they will have seven or more years’ post-qualification experience. When a candidate is proposed for any assignment, Source provides a full CV.
Our CEO Peter Workman describes the increasing popularity of flexible legal support and the broadening range of situations in which the model is now being used, and suggests three underlying causes for this development, in his article A changing market.
Peter then lists some specific advantages of the model for in-house legal teams, in his follow-up article More for less.
We refer above to a streamlined full service which includes three broad categories of legal support, although assignments can include elements of more than one and can evolve over time, in dialogue with us.
In-house placements involve the placement of a lawyer within your team, for instance to cover an absence (such as parental leave), to increase capacity or to provide specialist expertise for a particular situation. This is carried out under a contract between Source Professional Support Limited and your business.
Project teams involve the provision of a team to handle a specific project, such as preparation for a large transaction. It might involve Source lawyers on an in-house placement with you, potentially in conjunction with external lawyers from Temple Bright (handling areas not requiring a presence “on the ground”). The placements would take place under a contract with Source Professional Support Limited while the external lawyers would advise you under the engagement terms of Temple Bright LLP.
Call-off support involves legal advice from external lawyers on discrete tasks. This advice would be provided under the engagement terms of Temple Bright LLP, tailored to reflect your requirements. For instance the firm might run a general file enabling case-by-case fixed fees, or might charge a flat monthly fee for an agreed scope of work or time allocation. Temple Bright’s four promises describe the approach made possible by the firm’s streamlined partner-only model: City quality, reasonable and more certain fees, no junior solicitors, responsiveness.
The above options enable Source to offer clients innovative and flexible solutions involving support for an hour or a year, or anything between.
Source and Temple Bright collaborate to provide a streamlined full service (as described in our previous FAQ response) which might involve a hybrid senior team, where our CEO Peter Workman suggests this as the best and most cost-effective model and you are comfortable with the approach. It involves Source lawyer(s) placed with you working alongside Temple Bright partner(s) advising you through the firm. Our hybrid teams are distinguished by the high quality and experience level of all the lawyers, their cohesion and consistency of approach, and the competitive rates offered by Source and Temple Bright for individuals of this calibre.
A further advantage of the hybrid team model, and the two firms’ collaboration in general, is an increased ability to meet any demand for short term or part-time in-house placements.
Finally, Source flexible lawyers placed with you have access to Temple Bright’s resources and can (if you wish) obtain quick and confidential input in niche areas from the firm’s specialist partners, on an initial informal basis. This might be a prelude to your deciding to instruct such specialists, perhaps mediated by your Source flexible lawyer, creating a hybrid team.
Clients do not need to deal with any admin as Source takes care of it all.
All Source flexible lawyers are provided to clients on a PAYE basis. Our PAYE-only model eliminates any issues and risk in connection with IR35 status. An employed flexible lawyer is seconded to you, under a contract between you and Source Professional Support Limited. We ensure that all the employment-related administration (including payroll, tax and regulatory matters) is suitably handled.
Most clients prefer this simplified approach which means they do not need to be concerned about flexible lawyers being deemed their employees, nor any risk in connection with IR35 status.
Source in-house placements typically last between three months and a year, but they can be terminated early and can often be extended for longer at the client’s request. Successive agreed extensions are quite common, given the advantages of the arrangement.
Should you need a placement for a period which is less than three months, Temple Bright can usually offer a short term secondment or other flexible arrangement to meet your needs.
Our flexible lawyers can attend your offices, work remotely or carry out a mixed approach. Self-evidently, a requirement for in-person attendance most days may result in a smaller pool of candidates (being those living within a commutable distance). However, it is not uncommon for assignments to comprise an initial period wholly or mainly in person which is then succeeded by a more remote or mixed approach. This can make the assignment viable for candidates from a larger geographical radius. We have found that many clients are increasingly comfortable with flexible lawyers working remotely, at least some of the time. We can discuss this aspect with you at the outset and will tailor our approach to reflect your priorities.
The first step in relation to any assignment is a discussion between you and our CEO, Peter Workman. This is to ascertain your needs and how these can best be met. As an experienced corporate lawyer and former Big Four partner, Peter calls on his twenty-plus years’ experience of corporate transactions and advising in-house legal teams to determine the most suitable candidate profiles and the most cost-effective approaches. To this end, the options Peter presents may include creative solutions not previously considered, such as a hybrid senior team involving a combination of Source Panel lawyers and Temple Bright partners.
Once the preferred approach and key terms (including scope of work, desired pricing and likely duration) have been agreed in principle, we will identify the most suitable lawyers from the Source Panel.
Our process and standards for membership of the Panel are stringent, typically involving a combination of a CV and interview, professional references and background checks. Previous experience and security checks are verified to the highest industry standards to ensure peace of mind for our clients.
Once we have a shortlist of candidates from our Panel, we will present their CVs to you and have a further discussion as to which of these candidates you may wish to interview.
We will then arrange the interviews and guide you further as you wish during this stage of the process. Once there is agreement in principle to proceed with a particular candidate, the terms will be formalised in our contract with you and the assignment can begin.
Our client team will remain regularly in contact with you to obtain your feedback and discuss any new developments and potential changes to the arrangements. Our CEO, Peter Workman, will be available to you throughout the engagement (and beyond) and will be delighted to give you further guidance in relation to any specific situation, or as to your overall resourcing strategy.
The typical client for most flexible legal support businesses is a larger organisation with an in-house legal team. This might be a PLC or other large business, or it might be a public body such as a local authority or government office. Source has been established to meet the needs of such clients and also smaller companies and professional firms seeking flexible legal support. Given our tailored approach and streamlined model, we can work effectively with clients of all sizes.
We serve clients in a broad range of sectors. In some industries it is vital for lawyers to have sector experience, given factors such as sector-specific regulation, working practices and forms of contract. Such considerations will inform our dialogue with you when you tell us your requirements for the assignment. Our firsthand familiarity with these questions as practising solicitors, and the resulting pragmatism and sound judgement, helps us to create the best possible solution for each assignment.
Usually, our client is a UK business or the UK branch of an international business. This reflects the fact that our lawyers are UK-based and are specialists in English law. However, we are open to assignments outside the UK subject to a discussion of how practical issues can be addressed.
Source is not limited to assisting Temple Bright clients. We provide our services to businesses in general, anticipating that many would continue to be advised by various law firms while using flexible lawyers, from Source and perhaps other flexible legal support providers in parallel.
There are three obvious advantages arising from the fact that Source has been established by and partners with a law firm, Temple Bright, and is run by three highly experienced practising solicitors.
First, we apply a solicitor’s high standards to both the recruitment of lawyers to our Panel and to the proposal of candidates to you. Our pledge is that we would rather offer up no candidates than a candidate who is not of sufficient quality or the right fit for your business.
Secondly, we bring a solicitor’s professional expertise to the discussion of your needs and how these can best be met. An example of this is described in our response to the previous FAQ: to what extent is sector-specific experience needed for a particular role. A further example would be our ability to propose a hybrid senior team (combining Source flexible lawyers and Temple Bright partners) which could avoid your committing yourself to more placement cover, or as the case may be more reliance on external lawyers, than is strictly necessary. Our professional background gives us the insight and experience needed to provide relevant guidance in such areas.
Thirdly, Source can provide a streamlined full service, as described in our response to the third FAQ above, through its arrangements with Temple Bright. This includes call-off support as well as in-house placements and project teams, and potentially a hybrid senior team with the distinguishing features described in our response to the fourth FAQ above. In short, we can provide a uniquely high quality one-stop-shop through our collaboration with Temple Bright.
Source provides flexible legal support across the full range of commercial law practice areas.
The practice areas most in demand tend to be broad non-contentious advisory practice areas such as corporate, commercial (including data privacy), IP & technology, employment, financial services, company secretarial, compliance and ESG.
Expertise in other areas is often required by clients involved in sectors associated with a legal discipline, such as real estate, construction, planning, energy or media. Support from litigators (both general and specialised) may also be required.
As noted in our response to the previous FAQ, a unique selling point of Source is our ability to field a hybrid senior team with the attractive features described in our response to the fourth FAQ above. This might involve, by way of example only, Source providing a flexible lawyer covering broad advisory practice areas such as corporate and commercial, supported by Temple Bright partners handling more specialised aspects.
Temple Bright has specialists in a broad range of practice areas.