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Our approach
What investment round legal work involves
Whether you're raising from angels, a seed fund or institutional investors at Series A and beyond, an equity investment round involves a set of legal documents that govern how money comes in and what rights investors acquire. Getting this right protects the business, keeps the cap table clean, and avoids problems down the line.
The core documents we prepare and negotiate include the subscription agreement (setting out the terms on which new shares are issued), a shareholders' agreement (or an amendment to your existing one), updated articles of association, board and shareholder resolutions, and a disclosure letter. Where investors are conducting due diligence on the company, we work with you to prepare and respond to their requests, making sure nothing slips through and no unnecessary delay creeps in.
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How we work with you
All of our investment round work is priced on a fixed fee basis, agreed upfront before we start. You know what the legal costs will be from day one, with no surprises.
We act for the company raising investment throughout. That means our job is to get you across the line on terms that work for your business. We move at the pace of the deal: investment rounds often have momentum and timelines that compress without warning, and we're set up to respond quickly when that happens. You'll have direct access to a senior solicitor at every stage, not a junior handling things in the background.
We regularly work alongside corporate finance advisers and accountants as part of a wider advisory team. One thing to be clear about: SEIS and EIS are invaluable tax schemes for investors, and advance assurance from HMRC is often a condition of investment. The tax qualification work sits with your accountant or a specialist tax adviser, not with us. If you don't already have someone in place for that, we can make introductions. The legal structuring, documentation and execution of the round is what we handle.
Who we work with
Our investment round clients include tech businesses and high-growth companies at various stages of their journey. Many are raising for the first time and want a solicitor who will explain the documents clearly, not just send them over for signature. Others have been through previous rounds and want a team they can rely on to be efficient and straightforward.
We also advise investors directly in some transactions. If you're an angel investor or a small fund putting money into an early-stage company, we can act on your side, reviewing the documents and making sure the terms protect your position.
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Case Studies
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Meet the team
Craig is a corporate and commercial solicitor at Tend Legal, working with founders, business owners and leadership teams as they build, grow and protect their businesses.
He advises on a wide range of matters: mergers and acquisitions, shareholder agreements, company structures, governance and commercial contracts of all kinds. Craig also has a particular interest in intellectual property, and regularly advises on trademark and copyright matters. His IP work has included a matter involving a Premier League and England international footballer, and advising on a copyright assignment connected to a well-known album cover.
Down-to-earth and easy to work with, Craig places a strong emphasis on clear communication and making sure clients feel confident about the decisions they're making. He works closely with agency and commercial clients, acting as an accessible part of their wider advisory team.
Outside of work, Craig is a keen football fan and enjoys spending time with his family.
Neelam is a corporate and commercial solicitor with a practical, no-fuss approach to helping businesses get things done.
On the commercial side, she works with agencies, tech companies and growing businesses on the contracts that underpin their operations: drafting, reviewing and negotiating agreements across a wide range of commercial arrangements. On the corporate side, she assists overseas businesses setting up in the UK and forming UK subsidiaries, and has experience of M&A transactions and investment rounds.
Before qualifying as a solicitor, Neelam had a career in legal technology, including as Director of Global Product at LegalZoom. She brings that perspective to everything she does: a deep understanding of what good legal service looks like from the client's side, and how to deliver it.
She's also unfailingly cheerful. Even on Mondays.
When Neelam isn't at her desk, she can often be found upcycling old furniture in her shed, discovering new eateries or testing out recipes on friends and family.
From the moment she got involved in her parents' businesses at a young age, Nicole knew she had a passion for helping businesses thrive.
A corporate and commercial solicitor, Nicole focuses on the work that matters most to growing businesses: M&A transactions, investment rounds, shareholder agreements and company secretarial support. She also helps clients navigate the commercial side: negotiating and reviewing contracts, advising on joint ventures, and being a steady pair of hands through transactions of all sizes.
Nicole is also working towards an MBA, which tells you something about her character and her love of business. Her advice is grounded in commercial reality, not just legal theory.
When she's not taking care of business, Nicole likes to read, run, play tennis and attend church.
Alistair co-founded Tend Legal with Shona on a simple idea: that small and medium-sized businesses deserve the same quality of legal advice as large companies, without the large firm experience.
As a solicitor with a broad commercial practice, he advises business owners on the full range of issues that come with running and growing a company. That means employment law: advising on settlement agreements, workforce decisions and the day-to-day employment questions that land on founders' desks. It means commercial work: negotiating and reviewing contracts, supplier agreements, and the commercial arrangements that keep a business running. And it means corporate transactions: from business sales and acquisitions to investment rounds, share structures and restructures.
Before co-founding Tend Legal, Alistair was a partner at Woodfords Solicitors in South West London, where he spent over a decade building a reputation for clear, commercial advice to SMEs. He is known for his calm approach, his ability to cut through complexity, and his willingness to give a straight answer.
When not working or acting as taxi driver to his three children, Alistair can be found riding bikes or skateboards, playing various instruments, or at church.
Frequently Asked Questions
A subscription agreement records the terms on which a specific investor is subscribing for shares: the number of shares, the price, any conditions attached to the investment, and the representations made by the company to the investor. It's a transaction document for that particular round.
A shareholders agreement is an ongoing governance document that sits alongside the articles of association. It sets out how the company is run, how decisions are made, what rights shareholders have, and what happens in various scenarios (like a share sale or a founder leaving). If you already have a shareholders agreement in place from a previous round, it will usually need to be amended to bring new investors in and reflect any new terms negotiated.
Both documents are typically needed in an equity investment round, and they need to work together. We draft and negotiate both as part of the same engagement.
SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme) and EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) are UK government tax relief schemes that give investors significant income tax and CGT benefits when they invest in qualifying early-stage companies. For many angel investors and seed funds, SEIS/EIS qualification is a condition of the investment.
We don't handle the tax advice or the HMRC advance assurance process. That sits with your accountant or a specialist tax adviser, who will assess whether your company qualifies and obtain advance assurance from HMRC before completion. What we do is structure and document the round in a way that's consistent with SEIS/EIS requirements.
If you don't already have an accountant or tax adviser who can handle this, we can introduce you to specialists we work with regularly.
Our default position is to act for the company raising investment. That's where our focus sits: getting the right documents in place on terms the business can live with.
In some transactions, particularly where an angel investor or a small syndicate is investing and needs their own representation, we can act for the investor side instead. What we can't do is act for both sides in the same transaction. If you come to us as an investor and the company already has its own solicitors, we can advise you on reviewing and negotiating their documents.
It varies considerably. A straightforward seed round with a single investor and relatively standard terms can complete in a few weeks once the commercial terms are agreed. A Series A with multiple investors, complex term sheet negotiation, full legal due diligence and institutional investors' lawyers involved will naturally take longer.
The biggest variable is usually not the legal documents themselves. Delays come from investors taking time to commit, due diligence queries that require information gathering from the company, or negotiations that go back and forth on terms. Our role is to keep the legal side moving and not become the bottleneck.
If you have a target completion date or a particular deadline (a grant condition, a product launch, an existing investor's timeline), tell us early and we'll work to it.
Investor due diligence ("DD") is a review of the company's legal and commercial position before investment completes. Institutional investors typically run a structured DD process covering corporate records, contracts, IP ownership, employment arrangements, regulatory compliance and litigation history. Angel investors may run something lighter.
We help you prepare for this by reviewing your existing documents, identifying anything that needs to be addressed before DD starts, and responding to the investor's legal due diligence questions and requests. We also prepare the disclosure letter, which is the document where the company formally discloses any exceptions or qualifications to the warranties given in the subscription agreement.
Getting DD preparation right matters. Problems that surface during DD can delay or derail a round. Sorting them in advance, or at least understanding them so they can be properly disclosed, keeps the process on track.