Employment Law Service

The services we currently offer include:

• One-off Advice: This is either provided as verbal advice only within the meeting itself, or, alternatively, clients will receive written legal advice, typically within three weeks after the meeting. Whether you receive immediate verbal advice only or written advice, will depend on the nature of your case, the urgency and our capacity.
• HR Handbook Services: We assist businesses in formulating and updating their HR handbooks, ensuring they are in line with current employment laws. Typically, we would look to provide clients with a finalised version for them to review within a 7–10 week period from completion of our onboarding process.
• Employment Tribunal Assistance: Our team provides guidance and support for those navigating employment tribunals, including representation at hearings. This service mainly caters for individuals, although in limited circumstances we may act for a local charity that is otherwise unable to afford legal assistance.

Key stages and timescales for Employment Tribunal service:

As part of our Employment Tribunal assistance, clients will be provided with information on key stages and timescales, relevant to the circumstances in their particular case. Typically, this will involve setting out the value of a claim, organising relevant documents into an agreed bundle of documents, preparing witness statements in respect of the claim, and engaging with any settlement negotiations at any stage. As an indication, employment tribunal matters can last anywhere between six months and two years from issuing a claim to reaching a final hearing, although this varies depending on the complexity of a claim and where the hearing is to take place. The Employment Tribunal will set out directions for when each preparation stage needs to be completed by. For more information on the Employment Tribunal process, please click here.

Our service is typically limited to no more than a one-day hearing, on issues relating to unfair dismissal or contractual or wage dispute.

Experience and qualifications:

All our employment law cases will be undertaken by our team of law student volunteers, legal assistants, paralegals and trainee solicitors under the supervision of our specialist employment solicitor, Mathew Game. Mathew has over 15 years of experience, having qualified as a solicitor in 2011.

All our student volunteers are current Nottingham Law School students, undertaking legal studies at both under-graduate and post-graduate level.

Our legal assistants are either undergraduate law students undertaking a placement with us as part of their law degree or they are law graduates.

Our paralegals and trainee solicitors are all law graduates. Some of our paralegals or trainees are also completing, or have completed, their professional post graduate studies (Solicitors Qualifying Examination, Legal Practice Course or Bar Training Course).

Whilst our law students, legal assistants, paralegals and trainee solicitors are not legally qualified, they all work under the supervision of a qualified solicitor and undertake suitable training to be able to carry out their roles.

Costs Information:

Our service charges

All our employment services are provided free of charge. As there is no fee for our service, VAT is not applicable.

Disbursements

It is very rare that there will be any disbursements in the types of cases we assist with. Currently, there are no tribunal fees in order for an individual to bring and Employment Tribunal claim. In the rare circumstances where a client case does involve any disbursement costs and VAT, we will write to our clients to tell them this and set out the likely amount. Our clients will be responsible for paying any disbursements that may fall due (such as for an expert medical report).

We specify to our clients exactly what is included within the services provided, and any services not included that might reasonably be expected to be part of the package.