Employment Law

Employment Contracts

Our employment lawyers support a national and international client base from our London office, as well as having an enhanced capacity to focus on regional headquartered businesses, through our branch offices in the South East and the Midlands.

As a firm, we have developed specialist expertise over the years in the drafting and negotiating of employment related contracts and documentation for clients in the IT, telecommunications and business technology communities, focusing on issues which particularly affect these clients, including the ownership of intellectual property developments and the protection of non-physical assets such as proprietary source code.

Our employment practice has now extended well beyond our historical client base in these industries, probably because so many of the issues which affect those clients, also affect clients across all business sectors, such as performance related pay and bonuses, executive achievement targets, the protection of proprietary business information, data protection compliance, the effect of the Working Time Regulations and post employment restrictive covenants. Whoever our client, we focus on ensuring that all the documents we draft and negotiate are tailored to the individual needs of that business, and the organisational focus/seniority of the target signatories.

Employee Handbooks and Business Procedures

With an ever greater need for employers to communicate their procedures clearly to employees and other workers to ensure that those procedures will be binding on their workforce, our employment lawyers are here to help our clients with the drafting of grievance and disciplinary procedures, and policies on a wide range of issues, from email monitoring and bring your own devices (BOYD) to work, to acceptable and unacceptable employee use of social media.

The very fact that we are experts in the business technology law field, means that we understand the issues arising from misuse of technology and social media more than many other employment lawyers, as well as the advantages which can come to our clients by promoting their businesses through digital media, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Dispute Resolution and Settlement Agreements

Sometimes of course, however carefully our clients run their businesses, disputes will arise, and when they do, we are there to help, by managing investigations in compliance with our clients’ internal procedures and all applicable privacy laws. We are also highly experienced in the drafting and negotiating of settlement agreements to enable a clean break to occur between employer and employee, without any admission of liability on either part where this is the most appropriate way forward for both parties.