Contentious Employment Senior Associate

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GBH Law, a niche firm based in Godalming, Surrey, focuses on providing excellent legal advice to its wide range of clients. We are passionate about what we do and our dispute resolution and employment lawyers are highly regarded by their clients and peers alike. For more information about GBH Law, please do have a look at our website: www.gbhlaw.co.uk.

We are looking for a commercially and strategically aware senior associate, experienced in contentious employment work, to join our team. An ideal candidate would hold ambitions to share in the ownership of the business, be hard working and ambitious both for themselves and for the firm and demonstrate a desire to develop his or her own practice as well as the firm’s practice more generally.

You would be working with directors Hamish Cameron Blackie and Andrea Tishler, focusing on contentious employment work, and we would expect you to undertake the following with minimal supervision:

• Drafting ET1s, ET3s, and witness statement preparation.
• Final hearing preparation and representation with or without counsel as appropriate to the complexity and length of the case.
• Drafting Notices of Appeal, preparation work and final hearing representation in the Employment Appeal Tribunal with or without counsel as appropriate to the complexity and length of the case.
• High Court litigation, typically relating to non-compete post-termination restrictions, working closely with leading or junior counsel.
• Drafting position statements, preparation work and representation in commercial mediations with or without counsel as appropriate.
• Advising on executive terminations.
• Drafting and negotiating settlement agreements for all grades of employee from operatives to senior executives.
• Preparing, drafting, and negotiating contracts of employment and service agreements for all grades of employee from operatives to senior executives.
• Drafting, reviewing, and updating employee handbooks and staff policies.
• Advising clients and the internal corporate team on redundancy exercises (both individual and collective).
• Advising clients and the internal corporate team on TUPE in the context of outsourcing, insolvency and other business transfers.
• Advising on Discrimination claims and PIDA claims.
• Advising on disciplinary and grievance procedures.

In addition to the above, we would expect you to keep up with law and practice in your specialist area and share any relevant updates with colleagues, including leading on internal training from time to time. We would also expect you to take a proactive approach to business development and marketing.

Relationships are key to us at GBH Law and we would expect any successful candidate to work effectively with other colleagues and provide leadership and support to more junior members of the team. We expect the highest standards of professional conduct from all of our lawyers.

As we are a relatively small team, an ability to undertake work outside of the strict parameters of contentious employment work (such as common law contractual disputes or commercial tort claims) and to support civil litigator colleagues would be seen as a real asset.

We are committed to supporting flexible and hybrid working and have recently adopted policies allowing all fee earners to work remotely some of the time.