Business
Our specialist team of employment law solicitors for businesses helps steer you through the maze of employment laws and regulations, from recruitment to termination and beyond. In close liaison with you, our approachable people will assess your needs, construct a strategy and deliver the right outcomes. We work hard to understand your business and commercial priorities, so we can give advice which is cost-effective and reduces your risk, while remaining up to date and easily understood.
The importance of appropriate and up-to-date employment contracts can be overlooked until it is too late. We help our clients by ensuring that the contracts they use not only set out the arrangements agreed with employees, but also protect confidential information and business relationships. A well-drafted contract can ensure that the employee understands what is expected of them and can help an employer to be in the best position to take whatever action may be needed during and after the contract ends.
Responding to economic changes and market pressures can produce a need to reorganise your business and reduce/increase your workforce. We can guide you through the relevant process so that the risks you face are mitigated. If you are undergoing a sale or merger or are acquiring a business, we can take you through the extremely technical TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations) process.
Protect your business by having properly drafted polices and handbooks. Suitable procedures will assist you in managing your staff and will also help you control issues which arise with your workforce. Our employment team are experienced in addressing the legal and practical matters which crop up with all workforces from time to time.
Any process which takes up management time is a cost to your business. We will assist you in carrying out a disciplinary process or conducting a grievance hearing so that you do so as efficiently and effectively as possible. That will mean your internal costs are reduced and your exposure is limited by following a lawful process.
A termination of employment may require a number of issues to be addressed: disciplinary procedures, enforcement of post-employment restrictions, negotiation of settlement agreements and tribunal claims. Our extensive experience in all of these areas will allow us to provide the practical advice you may need to address any of these matters.
Partner, Employment Law
Clare works with employers of all sizes and across all industries as well as senior executives and other individuals, advising on both contentious and non contentious aspects of employment law. This ranges from the provision of ongoing advice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, performance management processes and statutory rights to drafting contracts of employment, service agreements and staff handbooks to representing clients before the Employment Tribunal or civil courts in cases of unfair dismissal, breach of contract, claims to enforce post termination restrictive covenants and breaches of confidentiality. Clare has experience of representing clients in complex discrimination claims at first instance and in the appeal courts.
Clare designs and delivers client training on any aspect of employment law as well as undertaking regular public speaking engagements.
Clare recently acted for an employer and two individual Respondents in a multi million pound discrimination claim. She also successfully defended a client against a claim of race discrimination arising of out allegedly discriminatory Photoshopped images being circulated within the workplace.
She is currently advising on the design and implementation of redundancy consultation processes, including where collective consultation obligations have been engaged.
Clare also works closely with the Dean Wilson Company and Commercial team providing employment law support to its successful mergers and acquisitions function.
Clare read Law at the University of Reading and achieved distinction in the Legal Practice Course at the College of Law, Guildford. She trained at HRJ Law in Hitchin and qualified in 1999. She obtained a Masters degree in Employment Law from the University of East Anglia in 2006. She became a Partner at HRJ in 2002, joined Hewitsons in Cambridge and Northampton in 2010 and then joined Dean Wilson to head up its employment law team in October 2019.
Unfair dismissal, discrimination, breach of contract, post termination restrictions, contracts of employment, company handbooks, disciplinary and grievance procedures.
Clare can be contacted by email: CRW@deanwilson.co.uk or on her direct dial: (0) 1273 249277.