The Legal Environment of the Nonprofit Corporation

Directors and Advisors of Non-Profit Organizations need to understand the corporation’s legal environment, in order to ensure that the corporation acts within the bounds of the law and maximizes its performance for its constituency of service.

The below questions may relate to your organization’s current or past situation, can you answer these questions correctly without the benefit of legal Counsel or Google? If you can then you do not need to take our Introduction to the Non-Profit Directors and Advisors Legal Training Session. If you can’t correctly answer these questions you might want to consider applying for our course.

What you should know about the Selection of Counsel process:

(1) Do we include legal fees as part of our regular annual budget? If we do, how is the amount determined?

(2) Do other corporations with activities similar to ours find it necessary to retain counsel? Why? Or, if they do not, why not?

(3) Is there a lawyer, paid or unpaid, to whom we generally look for legal advice?

(4) Have we analyzed that individual’s particular skills in relation to our problems?

(5) What legal skills do we need that are unique, specialized or unusual?

(6) Is our corporation presently a plaintiff or defendant in litigation?

Why? What are the prospects of termination thereof?

(7) If a volunteer lawyer is presently acting as legal counsel, do I feel she or he is qualified to serve our needs?

(8) [If I am a lawyer:] Am I asked to give legal advice to the board of directors? Do the board and I understand when my discussion of a problem is or is not a legal opinion?

(9) [If I am a lawyer:] If I am asked to serve as counsel to the corporation for some matter, am I protected under my professional malpractice policy?

To obtain further insights take our online course “DIRECTORS AND ADVISORS INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITIES 101-2”. Available only on the WrightCo Academy platform.