About Brightlink
Brightlink is a specialist law school and legal education provider helping people build careers in law and organisations develop legal talent.
We provide CILEX qualifications, legal apprenticeships, professional development and legal career guidance through flexible online learning, supported by real people.
What makes Brightlink different is not simply what we teach. It is how we teach, how well we know legal education and how closely we work with the people who trust us with their learning and development.
Why Brightlink Exists
People come to legal education from very different starting points. Some are school leavers. Some are graduates. Some are already experienced paralegals. Others are changing careers, returning to learning or studying alongside work, children, caring responsibilities and everything else that life brings.
Talent is not confined to people who can study full time, relocate to attend university or take on significant debt.
Brightlink was created to make high-quality legal education and legal careers more accessible, flexible and understandable.
For us, widening access is not about making legal education easier. It is about removing unnecessary barriers while maintaining high expectations.
Our Roots Run Deep in Legal Education
Brightlink was founded by legal educator Lorna Baldry, following many years working across legal education, professional qualifications and restorative practice.
Lorna began working with CILEX education in 1999 and has worked with CILEX qualifications and learners for more than 25 years. Her work has included teaching and leading CILEX provision, examining and serving as a Chief Examiner, writing qualifications, and helping to establish and support accredited centres.
She also project-managed, researched, designed and developed the first fully online CILEX learning provision, long before online legal education became commonplace.
While working in further education, Lorna developed a multi-sector pro bono legal advice clinic, bringing education and legal organisations together to provide free legal support to learners whose legal problems could otherwise have prevented them continuing their education.
These experiences demonstrated that technology can widen access, but also that education works best when people are known, relationships matter and learning connects with the realities of people’s lives.
Brightlink was established in 2015 to put those ideas into practice.
The People Behind Brightlink
Brightlink is a community of teachers, lawyers, legal professionals and education specialists. Our people bring real experience from across the legal profession, education and related sectors, combining academic knowledge, professional practice, teaching expertise, examining and assessment experience, pastoral support and an understanding of legal qualification routes.
A good lawyer needs more than knowledge of law, and good legal education requires more than access to course materials. Our tutors facilitate, explain, question and give feedback. They encourage independent thinking, help learners develop professional confidence, and help make complicated qualification journeys understandable.
Brightlink would rather help someone understand all their options and make the right decision than simply sell them a course.
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Kayleigh Long
Head of Law School
Justine Woodcock
Subject & Personal Tutor
Nicholas Waller
Subject & Personal Tutor
Shane Robson
Subject & Personal Tutor
Dr Kimberly Shindel
Subject, Personal & Pastoral Tutor
Zarina Sharif
Tutor
Darren Hackley Green
Tutor
Laura O’Connell
Tutor
Candice Rumble
Tutor
Marissa Johnson
Tutor
Julia Hurren
Tutor
Edidiong Princewhite
Tutor
Emily Wapples
Tutor
Dr Connor Morris Watts
Tutor
Jacob Anderton
Tutor
Sarah Powell
Tutor
The Brightlink Legal Learning Method
Brightlink does not believe legal education begins when somebody opens their first textbook, or ends when they pass their final assessment. The Brightlink Legal Learning Method is Brightlink’s approach to developing legal professionals throughout the learning and career journey.
Every journey starts somewhere. Brightlink helps people explore legal careers, understand the routes available to them, and make informed decisions.
Learning does not happen in isolation. Relationships with tutors, other learners, employers and professional communities help people ask questions, share experience, solve problems and learn from different perspectives.
Strong professional practice needs strong foundations: legal knowledge, skills and qualifications, built through structured, flexible learning, specialist tutors, workshops, resources, feedback and assessment preparation.
Knowledge becomes meaningful when it can be applied: applying learning, developing professional skills, connecting study to legal roles, and developing experience and evidence.
Qualification is not the end of learning: progression, professional development, leadership, reflection and lifelong learning continue beyond it.
That completes the Legal Learning Method. It also begins the next cycle.
Human Connection by Design
Brightlink has delivered online legal education since long before online learning became normal. We believe in technology because it can make learning flexible, remove geographical barriers and make education accessible in circumstances where attendance might otherwise be impossible.
But we do not believe technology should replace people.
Brightlink deliberately keeps human connection at the centre. Learners can access tutors, learn with other people, ask questions, discuss ideas, receive individual feedback, and seek help when struggling with study or understanding their qualification journey. Employers can speak to people who understand their organisation, their learners and the legal education landscape.
Technology should make those relationships easier to access, not remove them.
Our Teaching Approach
People learn within relationships and communities. Learners bring different experiences, strengths, responsibilities and challenges. Effective education should recognise those differences while encouraging responsibility, independence and high standards.
Brightlink seeks to create learning environments where people can ask questions, contribute experience, reflect, challenge ideas respectfully and take increasing responsibility for their own development.
The aim is not to create dependence on a tutor. It is to help people become capable, reflective and increasingly independent legal professionals.
What This Looks Like in Practice
We combine technology with genuine human support, so you are never just a number.
For employers, the Brightlink approach means having a legal education partner that helps make the system understandable, responds when support is needed, and works with both the organisation and the individual learner.
Brightlink Today
Brightlink has grown from its roots in online CILEX learning into a specialist legal education provider, working with learners and employers across England and Wales. We work with organisations including law firms, in-house legal teams, local authorities, and public-sector, private-sector and third-sector employers.
Today, Brightlink delivers CILEX qualifications, Welsh Legal Services Apprenticeships, solicitor apprenticeships, legal education and professional development.
500+
Current learners
280+
Employer partners
Pioneers
CILEX e-learning innovation
Award-winning
Legal education excellence
Standards and Recognition
Brightlink’s work is supported by recognised standards, accreditations and commitments across legal education, cyber security, inclusive employment and employer responsibility.
Brightlink is an approved training provider for CILEX qualifications.
Brightlink holds Cyber Essentials Plus certification, supporting our commitment to robust cyber security standards.
Brightlink is a Disability Confident Committed employer, supporting inclusive recruitment and employment practices.
Brightlink has achieved Gold Award recognition through the Employer Recognition Scheme.
What We Believe
Passing assessments matters. Qualifications matter. But neither is the whole purpose of legal education.
Brightlink wants learners to leave with greater legal knowledge, a better understanding of themselves as learners and professionals, critical thinking, the ability to apply knowledge, the ability to recognise gaps in their own knowledge, the confidence to ask good questions, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
We want legal careers to be open to talented people from different backgrounds, and opportunities available to people at different life stages. We want employers to be able to develop excellent legal professionals internally, and we want learners to eventually use their own knowledge to help others.
That is what learning can do.
Brightlink Insights
Explore articles from Brightlink and our contributors on legal learning, careers, study and professional development.
Choosing where to study for a CILEX qualification matters. Here are 11 questions to help you compare training providers, understand what is included and choose the learning experience that suits you.
Read article : How to Choose a CILEX Training Provider: 11 Questions to Ask
Practical study tips for law students, including active recall, spaced repetition, revision planning, note-taking, practice and ways to make study fit around real life.
Read article : Study Tips for Law Students: Practical Ways to Learn and Revise
Lorna Baldry explores how restorative practice can bring connection, accessibility, support and human relationships into online learning.
Brightlink Events
We run free events, open sessions and practical workshops for people exploring legal careers, developing their professional skills or considering study with Brightlink.
See what is coming up and reserve your place through our Brightlink Events page.
