Darwin Gray Doubles Employment Law Team
By admin
Issued on behalf of Darwin Gray
London prices, burgeoning legislation, increased litigation and home-grown success have all prompted Darwin Gray to double its employment law team in the last year.
The Cardiff-based solicitors took on HR consultant Fiona Crawford last December, specialist discrimination solicitor Eleanor Williams in April and newly qualified solicitor Rhys Parsons will join the team from city firm Norton Rose in September.
Bethan Darwin, head of Darwin Gray’s employment team, said, “Our workload has expanded considerably and we have been instructed by a number of substantial South Wales based employers such as the Serious Food Company in Llantrisant, Cardiff City Football Club, Communications Direct, Cyrus Engineering Limited and Dekor PLC.”
“Employers face a lot of work complying with employment legislation and this burden falls more heavily on smaller employers without a dedicated Human Resources function. This is one of the reasons we recruited HR Consultant Fiona Crawford – she acts as the outsourced HR department, handling things such as grievance and disciplinary procedures and consultation.
“There has been a big take up amongst our clients of her services and this demonstrates that employers are taking their obligations seriously.”
More than 180 pieces of employment-based legislation have been enacted since May 1997, prompting an outcry among small businesses. 12,400 small business owners have joined the Cut Red Tape campaign, arguing that as 82% of employers have no more than 10 members of staff they can not cope with the amount of employment legislation, in particular the administrative work involved in following the statutory disciplinary and grievance procedures.
Coupled to increased legislation is an upsurge in claims registered with Employment Tribunals which rose 33% from 86,181 in 2004-2005 to 115,039 in 2005-2006. However, Darwin Gray’s discrimination specialist Eleanor Williams says, “In my view it is anti-discrimination that is more of the growth industry.
“Employers want to make sure they avoid discrimination (and the costly claims that can involve) and we help them to do that with a combination of good equality policies and training to make sure those policies are implemented.”
Bethan Darwin believes that whilst employers recognise the need to be properly advised on their employment obligations they are increasingly price conscious which is of benefit to South Wales based solicitors such as Darwin Gray.
“Recent client gains include a number of London-based companies, such as venture finance company Frontiers Capital, Pervasic Limited and also Reading-based Netstore PLC who started to instruct us after we acted for one of their outgoing senior employees,” said Bethan.
“London solicitors with their high overheads charge anywhere between £400 and £600 for their partners to give employment advice and our London clients are very happy to find the same quality of advice for a lot less money. The increase in this work is why we have recruited a City trained solicitor to join us.”
