Legal capital is a concept used in UK company law, EU company law, and various other corporate law jurisdictions to refer to the sum of assets contributed to a company by shareholders when they are issued shares. The law often requires that this capital is maintained, and that dividends are not paid when a company is not showing a profit above the level of historically recorded legal capital.
In the UK a public limited company must have a minimum legal capital of £50,000. There is no such requirement for a private company
References
Legal capital Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA