Cohousing-L Mailing List: handling legal matters

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

We're wondering where in our governance structure the responsibility for
handling legal matters should reside. Currently it falls under our Finance
committee, but they are not sure they're the right spot for it. We don't
have a Board of Directors - per our bylaws, the whole membership
constitutes the Board - and it isn't obvious who besides the plenary could
decide to engage legal counsel.

In the past, the couple of times it's happened, the plenary was asked to
consense on our spending funds to engage a lawyer to advise us on some path
we wanted to pursue, and the team that was dealing with that issue went to
see the lawyer. Maybe that's good enough, or maybe it's a bit too ad hoc.

Where (if anywhere) do your communities place the responsibility for
engaging legal counsel or responding to some legal challenge? How has it
worked out when needed?

Thank you!
  Muriel at Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg VA