Employment law for business owners

Most of my employment work is for employers, which usually means owner-managed companies across England and Wales that have somewhere between a handful of staff and a couple of hundred, and no lawyer on the payroll. I give the legal advice and draft the documents, so that covers employment contracts, director service agreements and staff handbooks, advice on a dismissal or redundancy before you carry it out, and settlement agreements where an agreed exit is the sensible answer.

I should say that this is a narrower service than some employment lawyers offer, and the rest of this page explains what I do myself and what I pass on to others.

What I do and what I leave to HR consultants

Hands-on HR is best dealt with by HR consultants. By that I mean running the disciplinary meeting, taking the notes, managing sickness absence week by week and sitting in on a grievance, all of which a good HR consultant will do better and more cheaply than a solicitor. If you don’t have one, I can give you some names.

Where I come in is the legal question underneath, such as whether you can dismiss this person and what the risk is if you do, whether the restrictive covenant in your sales director’s contract is likely to hold, what the contract actually lets you change, and whether you should offer a settlement agreement and what should go in it. Your HR person can run the process while I advise on the points where it could go wrong, and there’s more on how that works on my advice for employers page.

Employment issues when a business is sold

Employment questions also come up in my main area of work, which is acting on business sales and purchases. A buyer’s solicitor will ask to see every employment contract, will want to know who has restrictive covenants and who doesn’t, and will ask about any dispute in the last few years. On an asset sale the staff usually transfer with the business under TUPE, which brings its own duties to inform and consult, and a seller who stays on after completion will need a service agreement of their own.

So if you’re planning to sell your business in the next few years, getting the employment paperwork into shape beforehand is one of the cheaper ways of making the due diligence process easier. I’ve also written separately about how to tell employees you’re selling.

Employment tribunal claims

I don’t run employment tribunal claims, for employers or for employees. If a claim has arrived, or looks likely, I’ll read what you send me, work out which of my Nexa colleagues is the right person for it (that depends on the claim, their capacity and their pricing) and introduce you. They then run the matter and quote their own fee.

I am a consultant solicitor and all legal work is carried out through Nexa Law Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (number 633024). In practice that means the colleague I introduce you to is part of the same firm, so you aren’t starting again from scratch somewhere else.

If you’re an employee

I do act for some employees, mainly on settlement agreements, and that work runs through my dedicated site at settlement-agreement.co.uk. There’s a short page here on advice for employees which explains what I can and can’t help with.

Fees and next steps

I work on fixed fees, with the scope written down and agreed before I start. A set of employment contracts and a staff handbook is usually £3,500 plus VAT, and advice on a particular problem is quoted once I’ve seen what it involves. Employers who want a solicitor on hand all year, without a quote each time, tend to use my annual subscription instead.

Employment law is in the middle of its biggest change in years under the Employment Rights Act 2025, so please bear in mind that this page was current at October 2026 and that anything written before then may be out of date. If you’ve got an employment issue in your business, do get in touch and send me the details.