Employment Contract Advice

Executives, directors and other senior employees should expect to have in place more comprehensive agreements concerning their employment in the form of a written contract.

Our Employment lawyers regularly review and advise in connection with the terms of service agreements and contracts of employment, particularly concerning fundamental employment rights such as notice entitlements, intellectual property issues, sick pay, confidentiality and restrictive covenants.

Employment contracts are often essential at the outset of the employment relationship, ensuring that employment status terms are understood and difficult issues anticipated.

Our employment contract solicitors also have a wealth of experience advising on complex remuneration and reward arrangements, such as bonus and commission schemes and golden handshake and golden handcuff terms, to ensure the executive's position is fairly represented.

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.

Our employment contract solicitors are determined and robust on your behalf, but also easy to deal with and clear in our advice. As employment contract experts, we will fight your corner but understand that a common sense approach is often required to find solutions that work for you in your professional and personal circumstances.

We can help ensure your written contract follows employment rights, including national minimum wage requirements, statutory sick pay, holiday pay, and post-termination restrictive covenants. Our employment contract solicitors have experience handling various employment contract issues alongside other employment disputes, such as unfair dismissal.

In particular, our employment contract lawyers provide the following:

• Clear and straightforward advice.
• Cost-effective support and certainty on costs where you need it.
• Extensive experience in 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.

Restrictive covenants are an important tool to protect business interests and are regularly and legitimately included in terms of employment for senior executives and senior employees.

However, restrictive covenants can be unfairly onerous and should be challenged at recruitment if they go too far.  They may also be unenforceable if they are drafted incorrectly or try to restrict an executive more than they should.

We routinely advise senior executives in relation to the enforceability of post-termination restrictions and employee confidentiality requirements.

We can draft or review documentation on behalf of individual clients to ensure that their position is understood and that their interests are fairly represented.

Our Employment lawyers are also able to advise in the context of employers seeking to enforce restrictive covenants and in particular in relation to exit strategies, pre-action correspondence and defence to legal proceedings in relation to employer recovery of damages and enforcement by way of injunctions.