Social Enterprise

We support social enterprises – both as advisors and as advocates for the movement.

We’re a rare mix of social enterprise lawyers and sector-leading financing, investment and impact advisers. Together, we give social enterprises the best start from day one. We help them set up governing documents in line with their values, arrange loans and approach investors. As a full service law firm we can produce people-friendly employment contracts and supplier agreements that drive sustainability, alongside providing day to day help with IP, disputes, real estate and more.

How we help

We’re here for every business with a social purpose. Over the decades, we’ve helped countless social enterprises get started, including Charity Bank and Big Society Capital.

We’ve also championed policies that make doing business easier for social enterprises everywhere. We worked with government to introduce the CIC (Community Interest Company) model and made the case for social investment tax relief.

We also helped to create Purposely, a free government-backed digital tool that helps businesses to simply embed purpose.

Explore

Protected: Purpose & Impact: your roundup

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Read more

Our Impact Counsels’ Forum

Bates Wells’ Impact Counsels’ Forum is for general counsel, senior lawyers and other leaders within B Corps, impact investors and …
Read more

Realise your purpose: Wellbeing in the workplace

Realise Your Purpose is a Bates Wells campaign to help commercial organisations consider, decide on and implement their ESG goals. …
Read more

Equality case law roundup: Bailey, Sutcliffe and Orwin

It has been a busy two weeks for equality and discrimination lawyers, with three recent judgments (one from the Employment …
Read more

Realise your purpose: Increasing social mobility and diversity in the workplace

Realise Your Purpose is a Bates Wells campaign to help commercial organisations consider, decide on and implement their ESG goals. …
Read more

We send a weekly round-up of charity and social enterprise news

Sign up
Meet our team