Director Service Agreements and Contracts of Employment

In addition, executives, directors and other senior employees should expect to have in place more comprehensive agreements in relation to their employment.

Our Employment lawyers regularly review and advise in connection with the terms of service agreements and contracts of employment, particularly in relation to key issues such as notice entitlements, intellectual property issues, confidentiality and restrictive covenants.

This is often essential advice at the outset of the employment relationship ensuring that terms are understood and difficult issues anticipated.

We also have a wealth of experience in advising on complex remuneration and reward arrangements such as bonus and commission schemes, and golden handshake and golden handcuff terms so as to ensure the position of the executive is fairly and clearly represented.

Recent examples of our work in this area include:

• Reviewing all employment terms and benefits for the Finance Director of a FTSE 100 company, advising on terms to improve and areas where clarification was needed

• Reviewing and advising a senior executive joining a PLC on the terms and effect of their service agreement and amending the agreement to protect the executive

• Advising a director of a national company on the terms of a bonus arrangement and amending the bonus agreement to safeguard the director’s position

• Assisting a senior executive understand the scope of the restrictive covenants they were being asked to accept, particularly in the context of business connections and knowledge they were bringing to their new employer

Our specialist team of employment solicitors is described in the independent Legal 500 directory as “excellent”.  In addition, both Partners in our team are recommended by the Legal 500.  Therefore, you can be reassured that you will deal with some of the best employment solicitors in the country.

We are determined and robust on your behalf, but also easy to deal with and clear in our advice.  We will fight your corner but understand that a common sense approach is often required in order to find solutions that work for you in the context of your professional and personal circumstances.

In particular, we offer:

• Clear and straightforward advice.
• Cost-effective support and certainty on costs where you need it.
• Extensive experience of advising senior executives, directors, partners and others with complex employment concerns, including discrimination issues and group claims.
• A credible team that is used to dealing with and acting against large employers and law firms on behalf of our clients.

Our Approach to Costs

We know that clarity on costs is vitally important to our clients. As standard practice, we give our clients an estimate of the costs involved in undertaking any piece of work at the outset. We then provide costs updates on a regular basis.