Various electrostatic and structural parameters for a series of classical and non-classical beta-lactams were determined and compared in order to ascertain whether some specific beta-lactams possess antibacterial or beta-lactamase inhibitory properties. The electrostatic parameters obtained, based on the Distributed Multipole Analysis (DMA) of high-quality wavefunctions for the studied structures, suggest that some non-classical beta-lactams effectively inhibit the action of beta-lactamases. As shown in this work, such electrostatic parameters provide much more reliable information about the antibacterial and inhibitory properties of beta-lactams than do structural parameters.