Need to know

• Regulators are taking a new approach and looking at what happens before charities breakdown.

• The Charity Commission has found a rise in interventions triggered by governance drift; missing minutes, opaque decision‑making, and trustees unable to explain how or why decisions were made.

Welcome to TSL’s Weekly Edge, whether you’re aiming for a regional or high-street practice, or just want to get a feel for how law works in the real world beyond textbooks, you’re in the right place. 

No corporate jargon, no massive deals, just real useful information designed to give you that extra edge in your legal journey.

🧠Wilson’s Weekly Wisdom

Summer can feel like a strange time.

It often looks like everyone else has secured the perfect vacation scheme, or is spending the summer building an impressive CV. Social media has a way of making it seem as though everyone is racing ahead.

The reality is very different. Some students are working to pay their rent. Some are caring for family. Others are still searching for opportunities or preparing for the next application cycle. None of those paths make you any less capable of becoming a solicitor.

Reading a book, improving your commercial awareness, volunteering, earning money in a customer-facing role, or simply taking time to recharge can all help you become a better lawyer in the long run.

Don’t spend your summer comparing your journey to someone else’s highlight reel. Use these next few weeks in a way that works for you. Whether you’re gaining legal experience, working a part-time job, or enjoying a well-earned break, you’re still moving forward.

📣 Your Turn: Ask Us Anything (Almost)

Got a question that’s been quietly bugging you about the legal world, commercial awareness, training contracts, or how regional firms actually work day to day? Good. We want it.

Each month, we’ll pick a question and do a an editorial response. No fluff. No corporate waffle. Just honest, practical answers you can actually use in applications, interviews, and real conversations in firms.

If you’re wondering it, chances are someone else is too. So be brave, be curious, and send it in.

👉 Submit your question here!

💡Spotlight Article

A trustee walks into a solicitor’s office with a problem that doesn’t look like insolvency. 

The charity’s lights are on, salaries are paid, creditors are quiet. On the surface, everything’s fine.

But underneath? 

The paperwork’s thin, the conflicts aren’t managed, and decisions are drifting into the grey zone, the beginning of a come-undone situation. 

🔎What’s happening? 

Charities going sideways don’t often start with empty bank accounts; they start with governance cracks that widen, quietly, until the whole structure gives way.

For years, charity insolvency was treated like a simple financial event, which is when the moment the money runs out.

But the spotlight is shifting.

Regulators are now rewinding the tape to look at what happens before breakdowns, when the real damage usually begins. Kids Company showed the pattern early: low reserves, a board unable to challenge a risky model, and a structure already cracking long before the final implosion.

Fast‑forward to 2025 and Evans v Charity Commission makes the point even louder.

The Tribunal backed the disqualification of trustees over unmanaged conflicts, blurred lines between charity and private interest, and weak financial oversight. The message is unmistakable: volunteer or not, you’re still in the regulator’s line of sight.

Sadly, this isn’t an isolated trend.

Recent Charity Commission casework shows a rise in interventions triggered not by financial distress, but by governance drift; missing minutes, opaque decision‑making, and trustees unable to explain how or why key choices were made. The regulator is signalling that “soft failures” are now hard risks.

At the same time, charities are operating in tougher conditions: inflation squeezing budgets, rising demand for services, and boards increasingly reliant on volunteers with limited governance training. These pressures make early legal advice more valuable, and more necessary than ever.

The Charity Commission’s own data reinforces this shift.

In its 2023–24 Annual Report, over a third of its regulatory compliance cases involved governance concerns rather than financial distress, with record‑keeping failures and unmanaged conflicts appearing as recurring themes.

At the same time, the Commission’s regulatory alerts have increasingly warned trustees that poor decision‑making processes, not just bad outcomes, can trigger intervention.

This reflects a wider trend across regulators: governance failures are now treated as early indicators of organisational instability, not administrative oversights. It’s therefore clear that for trustees, the danger zone starts well before insolvency.

For lawyers, the job is spotting governance drift early, guiding clients through the pre‑topple “twilight zone,” and helping them make decisions that will stand up to scrutiny when it arrives.

❓ Why it matters to high street firms

Local charities and volunteer‑run organisations usually walk through the door after something has gone wrong.

The substantial power of legal advice lies in catching issues upstream, before they spill into financial crises.

And that upstream work matters even more when:

• Volunteers aren’t shielded from legal consequences: The myth that “I’m just a volunteer” offers protection is fading fast. Evans shows why: trustees still make decisions about money, contracts, conflicts and charitable assets, and regulators expect those decisions to stand up to scrutiny.

• The final collapse is the final symptom: By the time a charity is visibly distressed, the underlying issues have often been brewing for months or years. Weak oversight, patchy records and fuzzy decision‑making quietly erode resilience long before anyone thinks about insolvency.

• Informal groups still need formal thinking: Community clubs, sports teams and grassroots charities often run on trust and goodwill, until disputes, financial pressure or regulatory attention arrive.

Grassroots bodies tend to rely on local lawyers once problems become too big to ignore. Advising on trustee duties, conflicts, contracts and financial risk is the backbone of organisational robustness, thereby helping clients build a culture that survives turbulence.

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest is any situation where a trustee’s personal stake, be it financial, professional or relational, sits too close to their charity duties.

It doesn’t need misconduct; just a risk that judgment could tilt the wrong way.

Evans shows the stakes: unmanaged conflicts aren’t a paperwork glitch; they can trigger regulatory action, trustee disqualification, and serious questions about whether charitable assets were protected.