How get legal works

Get Legal offers clear guidance and information about legal structures. It aims to help individuals, organisations and advisors to make informed decisions as they set up and develop charities, social enterprises and co-operatives. It also explains a range of legal forms in detail.

The Resources section of the site contains information on where to go for further advice and support, a glossary of terms and case studies to bring the legal forms to life. It also provides standard documentation and explanatory notes, which can be downloaded.

Underpinning all this is a bespoke decision tool, which asks a series of simple questions about your organisation and its aims, providing links to help and resources along the way.

For individuals and organisations

If you are thinking of setting up a charity, social enterprise or co-operative, then this site aims to be a useful starting point for your journey. It will help you to map out the different legal routes open to you. While it aims to be clear and simple, we would urge you to make use of the additional help available from a range of support organisations, information about which is available in the Resources section of this site.

For advisors

As a navigator offering direction to your clients, we hope that you will make use of the resources that this site provides. It aims to act both as a compass and reference tool.

A site like this cannot hope to be comprehensive, and will always be under development in terms of the information it provides. The partners behind the initiative are keen to ensure that this site can listen to and learn from experts already providing advice in these areas. If you have any suggestions or advice on how this site can be improved or added to, we would be delighted to hear from you via the Contact page.

An important note on growth

Over time, organisations change in ways not easy to predict. While commercial entrepreneurs can adopt a tried and tested commercial structure, many charities, ‘social entrepreneurs’ and co-operative enterprises are faced with the need to balance protecting their social aims with allowing the organisation to grow in ways they may not imagine at inception.

An organisation that might not consider certain types of investment in its early years might have different investment needs a few years down the line, for example. Circumstances around buying property, employing staff or paying board members might also change according to the enterprising ways in which an organisation decides to support and deliver its social mission.

While this website will help you to consider these issues, and direct you as much as possible along the appropriate route, it is important always to bear in the mind the need for flexibility in legal structures and consider allowing for growth and development.