Students’ unions

Students’ unions can have complex legal needs that cut across many different areas of law and regulation. We can offer them a combination of expertise, commercial nous, experience and the sense that we are alongside them in spirit, sharing their hopes and aims.

We are immensely proud of the work that we do for students’ unions and the student movement in general. And we feel that there is a close affinity between the values of Bates Wells and the ideals, ethos and vision of students’ unions.

How we help

We are a full-service law firm and so can provide our students’ union clients with a complete legal service. In particular:

  • We can help with constitutional and governance issues – and we wrote the NUS model documents used by many students’ unions today.
  • We can also help to protect SU committees from unnecessary risk by “incorporating” them into companies or CIOs.
  • We regularly advise on democratic issues, including the lawfulness of motions and campaigns, as well as student union newspapers, which can often involve advising on a mixture of equality law, freedom of speech, anti-discrimination, harassment and defamation, charity law and elections law.
  • We can advise on governance reviews, trustees’ powers and responsibilities, trading rules (including bars, retail and entertainment), financing of trading companies, and grant funding issues.
  • We can advise on commercial contracts (including disputes), fundraising, data protection, employment law, immigration and intellectual property.
  • Whatever your needs may be, we’re sure we will be able to help you.
Meet our team
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