Our Employment Tribunal team can assist employees and employers in bringing and defending the whole range of claims dealt with at the Employment Tribunal.  These include:

• Unfair dismissal
• Wrongful dismissal
• Discrimination (race, sex, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation, age, maternity or paternity leave or pay)
• Equal pay

Employers will sometimes dismiss employees without regard to the proper procedures prescribed by the law.  If you’ve been unfairly or wrongfully dismissed by your employer then we may be able to assist you in bringing a claim and recovering the money that is rightfully yours.

Employers will want to ensure that the proper procedures are followed so that employees can’t claim that they unfairly or wrongfully dismissed or discriminated against in some way.  Employment law is complex and specialist advice is often invaluable to employers in ensuring that proper procedures are followed in order to prevent claims.  In the event that a claim has been made then the firm’s employment law team can ensure that the matter is dealt with so as to ensure that costs and disruption to the business are minimised.

Employment law cases are generally undertaken on an hourly rate basis.  The following information is provided to assist you in understanding how our fees are calculated.  The prices provided are indicative of the likely cost of a case and should not be taken as an absolute quote.  You should still contact us to obtain a detailed quote that takes into account the individual circumstances of your case.  We will, of course, not undertake any chargeable work without your express consent to do so.

The applicable hourly rates are:

Partner – £300 (£250 plus £50 VAT)

Solicitor – £234 (£195 plus £39 VAT)

Trainee Solicitor/Paralegal – £120 (£100 plus £20 VAT)

There will be an additional fixed fee £1,200 per day (£1, 000 plus £200 VAT) for our attending an Employment Tribunal hearing, should it be necessary.  Generally, we would expect hearings before an Employment Tribunal to last between one and three days, depending on the complexity of your case.

Factors that could make a case more complex include:

• If it is necessary to make or defend applications to amend claims or to provide further information about an existing claim
• Defending claims that are brought by litigants in person
• Making or defending a costs application
• Complex preliminary issues such as whether the claimant is disabled (if this is not agreed by the parties)
• The number of witnesses and documents
• If it is an automatic unfair dismissal claim e.g. if you are dismissed after blowing the whistle on your employer
• Allegations of discrimination which are linked to the dismissal

We estimate that a typical employment tribunal case takes between 10 and 30 hours to complete.

A range of costs are as follows:

Low complexity case: £2,160 (£1,800 plus £360 VAT) to £3,600 (£3,000 plus £600 VAT)

Medium complexity case: £3,600 (£3,000 plus £600 VAT) to £9,600 (£8,000 plus £1,600 VAT)

High complexity case: £9,600 (£8,000 plus £1,600 VAT) to £36,000 (£30,000 plus £6,000 VAT)

Where we make electronic payments of monies to you or to other parties on your behalf then we will charge an additional professional fee of £36 (£30.00 plus VAT of £6.00) per transfer.  Our professional fees in this regard are in addition to any charges made by our bank which will be payable by you as a disbursement.

If we make an electronic payment of monies to you or on your behalf then this will incur a bank charge.  That bank charge will be payable by you as a disbursement in additional to our professional fees for making the transfer.  The bank charge will vary depending on how a payment is sent but will not exceed £10 per transfer.

Disbursements

Disbursements are costs related to your matter that are payable to third parties, such as, expert fees and barristers (counsels) fees.  Provided that you have put us in funds to do so we would usually pay disbursements on your behalf so as to ensure that your case proceeds as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

In the event that a barrister is instructed then their fees might be between £1,800 (£1,500 plus £300 VAT) to £3,000 (£2,500 plus £500 VAT) per day.  Their fees are likely to depend on their experience.  They may also charge travel expenses if they are travelling to court from out of the local area.

If experts are required to provide evidence in support of your claim, a report for example, the their fees might be between £1,800 (£1,500 plus £300 VAT) to £3,600 (£3,000 plus £600 VAT).  The exact fee will depend the complexity of the issues being addressed by the expert and the amount of time they spend on the matter.

In the event that an expert is required to attend the hearing to give evidence they will usually make an additional charge for doing so.  Their costs for attending court are usually between £1,200 (£1,000 plus £200 VAT) to £2,400 (£2,000 plus £400 VAT) per day.

The fees set out above cover all of the work in relation to the following key stages of a claim:

• Taking your initial instructions, reviewing the papers and advising you on merits and likely compensation (this is likely to be revisited throughout the matter and subject to change)
• Entering into pre-claim conciliation where this is mandatory to explore whether a settlement can be reached;
• Preparing claim or response
• Reviewing and advising on claim or response from other party
• Exploring settlement and negotiating settlement throughout the process
• preparing or considering a schedule of loss
• Preparing for (and attending) a Preliminary Hearing
• Exchanging documents with the other party and agreeing a bundle of document
• Taking witness statements, drafting statements and agreeing their content with witnesses
• preparing bundle of documents
• Reviewing and advising on the other party’s witness statements
• agreeing a list of issues, a chronology and/or cast list
• Preparation and attendance at Final Hearing, including, where necessary, the preparation of instructions to Counsel

The stages set out above are an indication and if some of stages above are not required then the fee will be reduced.

You may wish to handle the claim yourself and only have our advice in relation to some of the stages. This can also be arranged to meet your individual needs.

The time that it takes from taking your initial instructions to the final resolution of your matter depends largely on the stage at which your case is resolved. We will be able to provide you a more accurate timescale once we have more information and as the matter progresses. Simple cases may settle in a matter of weeks but more complex cases could well take between one and two years to reach a resolution.

Our team has over thirty years of collective experience in delivering high quality work in all matters relating to employment tribunal claims.  There are few areas of employment law that the team has not dealt with before.

Employment law work will generally be undertaken by Dominic Cassidy, Partner.

Partner Dominic Cassidy qualified as a solicitor in 1989.  Dominic specialises in Commercial and Civil Litigation.  He is an experienced Employment Tribunal advocate, invariably conducting cases without recourse to counsel.