For most early-stage climate technology companies, the founding narrative runs along familiar lines. Engineering comes first; capital comes second. Legal infrastructure rarely features in the pitch deck. Yet according to Mitesh Jagatia, founder of Eco Ventures Counsel, that omission can prove fatal long before a promising technology reaches the market.
“These often fiendishly complicated investment documents are not easy to understand,” he says. “They’re incredibly important and they have to be done correctly.”
Jagatia speaks from experience accumulated over sixteen years as a senior in-house lawyer at Sky, Bloomberg and Moody’s. It was during his time at Bloomberg that he co-created the Green Tech Legal Collaborative, a pro bono programme linking Imperial College London’s Enterprise Lab with leading law firms. The initiative won the LawWorks Award for Most Effective Pro Bono Partnership in 2023 and, at its peak, was providing free legal support to eighteen climate startups simultaneously.
“I preferred the night job to the day job,” he says. “I realised I was having far more positive impact with the pro bono programme.”
That realisation eventually prompted him to leave Bloomberg, spend a year contracting as a lawyer at Sky while building his next venture in the evenings, and launch Eco Ventures Counsel in early 2025. The first cohort launched in May of that year. Three cohorts have now run, a fourth is imminent, and an international expansion is taking shape.
How The Model Works
Eco Ventures Counsel operates on a matchmaking model with clear commercial logic on both sides. Jagatia spent a year cold-calling and cold-emailing universities, incubators, accelerators, venture builders and investors across the UK to build a pipeline of early-stage climate ventures willing to apply for the programme. Pre-Series A for-profit companies are eligible, as are university spinouts, social enterprises and, in due course, charities. Any organisation Jagatia describes as “planet positive” can apply.
On the law firm side, participating firms pay an annual fee and are each matched with one or more ventures for a full year of dedicated support. The arrangement is deliberately exclusive: each firm owns its relationship with its assigned ventures rather than sharing access with other firms in the programme.
The roster is formidable. Confirmed participating firms include Ashurst, BCLP, Dentons, Gowling WLG, Kirkland & Ellis, Linklaters, and Squire Patton Boggs, alongside Stephenson Harwood and others, giving startups access to advisers who routinely act for the world’s largest financial institutions and corporations. The IP firms Appleyard Lees and Keltie are also among the partners.
“One venture in cohort three told me that their brother works at Blackstone,” Jagatia says. “They were talking about which law firm was helping the venture. His brother said: ‘I work at this huge company and we use the same law firm.'”
The range of legal support is deliberately comprehensive. Fundraising documentation occupies the greatest share of time and resource. Commercial contracts, employment matters, Enterprise Investment Scheme structures and IP audits are also covered. In cohort one alone, running from May to December 2025, ventures at the lower end of demand received tens of thousands of pounds of free advice. Those navigating active fundraising rounds received support worth hundreds of thousands.
“The firms apply the same rigour,” Jagatia says, “to help our startups and spinouts with their own fundraising.”
The Case For Expanding Pro Bono
Pro bono legal work has existed in the UK for decades, but its focus has historically been on individuals, filling the void left by the long-term decline of legal aid. Jagatia’s argument to the firms he recruits is that the macro-level case for extending that model to climate companies is now compelling.
“If the planet continues to struggle,” he says, “the pro bono needs are going to rocket when we have ever more climate migration and wars over resources. We can do something to fix the source of many of these problems.”
The commercial incentive is also real. Firms that support early-stage ventures build early relationships with companies that may, if they scale successfully, return as paying clients for decades. Jagatia is candid about the appeal of that logic.
“You might be able to get some clients in the future,” he says, “if they successfully scale and they’re grateful to you for the amazing support you did to help them get to their position of success.”
A Window On The Sector
The ventures that have passed through the three cohorts provide a useful cross-section of the UK climate technology landscape. Bactery is developing a battery that generates electricity through bacteria in soil. HotGreen Solutions is working on an industrial heat pump. MarinaTex is creating packaging from fish waste and seaweed. Windfall Energy has designed a domestic battery aimed specifically at renters and flat-dwellers who cannot access rooftop solar. Another start-up in the cohort is developing a biosensor that measures the actual freshness of food as a scientific replacement for the blunt instrument of best-before labelling.
University spinouts form a significant share of applications and bring their own legal complexities. The equity stakes that institutions require in exchange for their early investment vary considerably between universities, and founders navigating that process for the first time can find themselves disadvantaged in negotiations they do not yet understand. Eco Ventures Counsel can advise ventures before they have completed the spinout process rather than after.
AI And The Limits Of The Algorithm
One of the more instructive exchanges in the conversation concerns the temptation for founders to rely on AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude as a substitute for formal legal advice.
Jagatia’s position is measured rather than dismissive. “If you have no legal support at hand, or you can’t afford it, which would be the case for 99 per cent of founders, then I think it’s better to use AI than nothing,” he says. “Even just to give you an idea of what you should be thinking about.”
But he draws a careful analogy. “It’s kind of similar to using this stuff to check your medical conditions. You might think ChatGPT or Claude has spotted these five things, I’ve therefore got this certain condition. But you may well not. You need to be careful how you use it — but you’re still better to use it than not.”
The gap between useful orientation and reliable counsel, in his view, remains significant. Law firms themselves are investing heavily in legal AI tools — he cites Harvey as a notable example — but their institutional expertise and accountability remain what early-stage ventures most need during a fundraising round or complex commercial negotiation.
Applications Opening for The Next Cohort
Applications for cohort four open this week, with a closing date in early May and a launch scheduled for July. Between 60 and 90 applications typically arrive per cohort. Jagatia has accepted between seven and 21 ventures per intake, and encourages those who are unsuccessful to apply again.
“The tenacity of reapplying, one, two, three times, is a positive rather than a negative,” he says. “It all just shows they really do understand the need for legal support and the value that our programme can provide.”
Beyond cohort four, Eco Ventures Counsel is preparing its first international expansion. Applications for an inaugural European cohort will open in September, with a planned launch in January 2027. Priority jurisdictions will include Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with Scandinavian markets also under consideration.
“I love to be wowed by these incredible ideas,” Jagatia says. “It always gives me hope that we might yet save this planet of ours.”
Applications for cohort four are available at ecoventurescounsel.com.
