Kirsteen Hook

Kirsteen is a Partner and specialist charities solicitor with significant experience advising charities and not-for-profit organisations of all structures and sizes on a wide range of matters including regulation, governance, risk and requirements for a charitable body. Her clients range from new organisations and small local charities/groups, through to large national and international charities. Kirsteen also has experience advising faith-based and educational charities and organisations.

Kirsteen joined Trethowans in 2022 after having spent over 10 years specialising in charity law at Blake Morgan. Before specialising into charity law, she spent 6 months at Save the Children on secondment which enabled her to experience being in-house at a charity.

Kirsteen is on the LexisNexis Q&A panel of experts for charity law, and has been recognised as a ‘Rising Star’ in the 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 Legal 500 editions for Charities and Not-for-Profit.

Notable work highlights

Extensive experience advising charities and other not for profit organisations.
Acting for Royal Chartered bodies on formation, incorporation, governance and other related matters.
Expediting an application for charitable registration to enable a new charity to be formed and registered with the Charity Commission within a 24-hour period where urgency was necessary.
Attending trustee meetings to assist in decision making and/or provide trustee training.
Advising charities in urgent and/or sensitive situations including assisting in managing risk and reputation.
Managed a large number of academy conversions and mergers.
Working with international lawyers to manage cross-border issues.

Accreditations & Memberships

Charity Law Association.

Areas of expertise

Charity governance and regulation, including Charity Commission requirements and specific issues affecting charities
Working with regulators, including the Charity Commission, Companies House, Privy Council, Department for Education and the Financial Conduct Authority
Advising on management of and issues associated with risk, reputation and safeguarding and advising on serious incident reporting
Joint ventures, collaboration agreements, mergers, acquisitions and partnering arrangements
Trading, trading subsidiaries and commercial arrangements and contracts for charities
Advising educational charities, academy trust companies on academy conversions, mergers and transfers, and significant changes
Advising Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies
Undertaking and advising on constitutional reviews
Delivering trustee and senior management training
Advising grant making or receiving bodies on terms and conditions
Providing advice to international charities and UK charities working in different jurisdictions on the requirements for charities in England and Wales
Advising on structures and formation of charities and not-for-profit organisations and incorporations

Testimonials

What our clients say about Kirsteen

“Kirsteen Hook gives excellent support. She understood our particular structure, ethos and therefore requirements, interpreting this to provide appropriate and timely advice.”

Legal 500, 2023

“Kirsteen Hook provides helpful and timely advice and I have recommended her to others before and would do so again. Thanks!”

Legal 500, 2023

“Kirsteen Hook has been fantastically helpful, clear and has detailed knowledge and experience. Other firms have generalists who dabble; Kirsteen is an acknowledged specialist and extremely good at it.”