Employment Law

When acting for employers, we work closely with our clients’ HR and management teams to advise on and provide commercial solutions to the day to day employment issues they face. We regularly guide our clients through disciplinary, capability and grievance procedures, restructuring exercises, redundancy situations and employee transfers.

We also use our knowledge and experience to advise employees both during employment and following termination.

For contentious matters, our employment team offers a vast wealth of litigation experience with each member of the team well used to representing clients in employment tribunals throughout the UK on a full range of employment issues including:

• Unfair dismissal and constructive dismissal
• Discrimination
• TUPE
• Protected disclosures (whistleblowing)
• Holiday and other claims under the working time regulations
• Breach of contract and unlawful deductions of wages
• Claims for a protective award
• Equal pay

We also regularly advise clients in respect of High Court litigation, particularly on matters concerning restrictive covenants and confidentiality, interim injunctions, directors’ duties and other breach of contract matters.

In terms of non-contentious advice, we are able to swiftly appraise contracts, policies and procedures, or draft originals from scratch, to ensure that our clients have documents which work for them and comply fully with the law. We are happy advising clients in small-scale matters concerning individual employees or in large-scale matters affecting the entire workforce, whether on an ad hoc basis or under our comprehensive employment law advice service, Short Cover.

We work proactively to ensure that our clients are always kept right up to date with developments in employment law through our series of quarterly seminars and departmental newsletters. We also provide bespoke training sessions and workshops for our clients to suit their individual needs.

Our Head of Department, Max Winthrop, is regarded as one of the regions’ few “key practitioners” and is referred to in Chambers UK as being “Renowned both as an expert advocate and strategic thinker” and in the Legal 500 as “a highly rated advocate”. Max is ably assisted by David Gibson, Partner and Seema Ahmed, Associate, allowing the department to provide round-the-clock support and offer a range of experience at competitive hourly rates.