On Thu, September 18, 2008 13:44, Thomas Dalton wrote:
One of the first things the new board will need to do
is find a
solicitor to go over the governing documents with, so I thought I'd
ask: Does anyone know a good solicitor that specialises in charity
law? In particular, who did v1.0 use and would they recommend them?
From long experience of writing company setup documents
and contract law I
was the one who gave the draft AoA and MoA a good 'going
over', indeed it
was because I spotted so many pitfalls and liabilities and told the
meeting (which was otherwise about to accept them) why they were so
dangerous/bad that I got put into the position of Chair and redrafted
them!
We also didn't have the cash available (such services are not cheap) even
if we had have thought it was useful (just as with getting an accountant
to do your tax return, they aren't liable, you are) so I then used my
family solicitors (one of the major regionals) for the Swear and that was
all.
One thing: just about all 'service businesses', like Solicitors, etc, tend
to be a bit like boxed software. They don't really understand how you want
to do things so will try to only talk about what they actually know. And
as we all know, the Wikimedia ethos is like nothing people have seen
before and tend to rarely understand ;-P
Alison