Withers Graduate Careers

Charities

The work of the Charities team

The Withers Charities team is held in high regard and recently won best Charities and Philanthropy team at the STEP (Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners) awards.

The team have a wide range of clients from the high profile such as the British Red Cross Society, the Trustees of the Tate Gallery, Macmillan Cancer Support, the University of Cambridge and the Imperial War Museum to small unincorporated associations and family-run trusts. The team has a reputation for, and prides itself on offering clients a personal, tailored service befitting such a diverse client base.

Clients present the team with a wide-range of work such as advising on complex issues relating to constitutional or governance matters, advice on high-value sponsorship or collaboration agreements, or on running fundraising events or lotteries. The team also sets up charities from scratch for existing or new clients.

The Charities team also keeps its clients abreast of legal developments or forthcoming Charity Commission consultations which will impact them, through regular emails and seminars.

Elizabeth Melia

University attending/attended: Bristol, London

PgDL/LPC institution: Bristol

Seats experienced: Estates Succession and Trusts,
Charities, Family

My experience in the Charities team

A charity is really a type of client rather than a strictly delineated area of law, and so the Charities team's work is very broad, including aspects of corporate and commercial, trust and taxation law, as well as charity law specifically.

A seat in Charities is consequently very diverse and, given the relatively small size of the team, an opportunity to play a key role in every matter you are involved in. A typical day might, for example, involve a piece of research, the drafting of Articles of Association for a new charity and some ongoing administrative work for a grant-making charitable trust. But the next day might be completely different - that's what Charities is all about.