In this paper we introduce a new distribution, called the modified slash Lindley distribution, which can be seen as an extension of the Lindley distribution. We show that this new distribution provides more flexibility in terms of kurtosis and skewness than the Lindley distribution. We derive moments and some basic properties for the new distribution. Moment estimators and maximum likelihood estimators are calculated using numerical procedures. We carry out a simulation study for the maximum likelihood estimators. A fit of the proposed model indicates good performance when compared with other less flexible models.