Employers

We pride ourselves on being able to offer quick and pragmatic solutions to all of our corporate clients in a way that helps their business rather than hinders it. No question is too ‘out there’ and each member of our team has up to date expertise in dealing with all areas of employment law.

We are not afraid to express an opinion and we offer all of our clients a progressive approach to billing structures for this kind of work, including low level monthly retainer pricing to allow our clients to effectively forecast their legal spend.

Our focus is to ensure that our valued corporate clients always feel comfortable picking up the phone or sending us an email, safe in the knowledge that the response will be prompt, helpful and cost effective.

Many of our long term corporate clients make use of our monthly retainer pricing model, which includes an annual review of their contracts of employment, offer letters, service agreements and staff handbook. This ensures that a business will always have up to date documentation which is adapted and changed in line with developments in legislation and case law.

Alternatively our team is happy to review or provide new documents for companies as and when needed. This would of course include tailored settlement agreements or one off policies which we draft according to the specific needs of the company.

All of our lawyers have a great deal of experience acting for companies in Employment Tribunal and Employment Appeal Tribunal processes. When it serves our client’s best interests we will robustly defend our client’s position. However a lot of our work comprises developing strategies with companies to resolve disputes at an early stage and avoid the significant costs and waisted management time involved.

As a boutique firm offering tailored costs solutions we are very happy to look at innovative litigation pricing structures in support of our client’s position. Our very close relationship with some of the UK’s best barristers chambers also ensures that we can negotiate very competitive pricings for barristers across various levels of seniority.

We provide a variety of different packages and solutions to support companies to construct and implement reorganisation and redundancy processes. Our assistance is always tailored to the individual needs of the company.

Our support can include working with a business to create a legally sound and commercially viable framework, along with a clear timetable for actionable steps. We can provide supporting documentation such as letters, meeting scripts and FAQs, along with day to day telephone and email support throughout the process.

We recognise that a clear sense of the direction of travel will often make these processes more manageable to implement, This is not just about ticking all the legal boxes (although this is important) but understanding the client’s unique business objectives and working collectively with the business to achieve them.

All of our lawyers come from City and International law firm backgrounds where transactional work is one of the key areas of an employment lawyer’s practice. As a niche employment team we regularly work with larger deal teams from other law firms or alongside niche corporate law firms offering corporate transactional support to businesses.

We offer the suite of employment law support in this area including advice on the application of TUPE (the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006), negotiating the employment warranties and indemnities in the deal documentation, advice on a typical employee consultation process, work with organisations acquiring staff including harmonisation of terms and integration of a combined workforce.

We have been able to provide fixed pricing structures for transactional support which slots into the overall pricing for the larger transaction, and our flexible approach to billing allows us to be very competitive in pricing in this area.

We are on a number of panels for large companies and the larger City law firms to provide advice and support to individuals who need individual settlement agreements reviewed. This service can be provided on a one to one basis, or as part of a bulk exercise where we provide this advice on site as part of a day long surgery for a competitive pricing structure.

We work closely with companies who are seeking to protect their business interests from unlawful competitive threat using a suite of different approaches. These include well drafted restrictive covenants that are tailored for the specific purpose; confidentiality restrictions that are carefully crafted to the relevant market sector; as well as deferred incentive plans aimed to encourage and reward good behaviour in departing employees after they leave.

If contractual documentation is not fit for purpose in this area it can give rise to incredibly costly losses for business because their hands are tied when it comes to taking action against departing employees. We therefore work closely with our corporate clients to ensure their contractual protection is as good as it can be and regularly reviewed and updated.

We are also instructed by companies at the point when action needs to be taken against departing employees in breach of their obligations. We will guide corporate clients through this process, aiming to achieve a cost effective resolution where possible, but with a mind to High Court litigation if this becomes necessary. We have close working relationships with the premier barrister’s chambers for this kind of work and regularly instruct juniors, senior juniors and QCs where appropriate in defence of our client’s position.

Conducting these processes can be complex and involved particularly where a senior member of staff is involved and at times great sensitivity is needed to avoid these processes escalating very quickly.

We have supported businesses through internal processes where significant adverse publicity is threatened; complex whistleblowing allegations have been raised such as perceived financial irregularity and fraud; or where multiple staff members have raised numerous complaints and a pragmatic solution needs to be looked at to avoid huge management time and legal costs being incurred.

We have a wealth of experience in the team in dealing with these sorts of processes across a number of different markets for a variety of different companies.

We recently represented a multi-national organisation that was involved in a major piece of discrimination litigation with significant press exposure and have real strength in depth experience as a team in this kind of work.

Not only do we work with companies who are facing these kinds of challenges: we also offer training to small and large corporates at all levels and work closely with companies to build the right culture and workplace experience to genuinely promote equality and diversity in the workplace.

Our training programmes often comprise a dual or multi-discipline training team, including non-lawyer professionals from a variety of different disciplines. We have found that this provides a more holistic approach to the client training experience. We have found these sessions particularly well received.

For more information on our training modules please contact a member of the team.

As the business world gets used to a sea change in working practices in the aftermath of the recent series of lockdowns, this is an ever changing landscape and employers are working hard to retain talent whilst at the same time continue to maintain standards of excellence for their customers and clients. We are supporting a variety of businesses in different sectors as they grapple with these new approaches.

We recently worked with an international organisation in putting together and implementing the UK piece of an international programme moving from a consultancy to worker model in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Uber litigation. We have a significant understanding of both the legal and commercial aspect of this complicated and dynamic area.