Settlement Agreements

It is vital you receive advice on the terms, to ensure you have a valid settlement agreement, also proper specialist legal support helps ensure your terms are lawful and acceptable for you and pay you what you are entitled to in the circumstances of leaving your employment.

You also need to ensure you aren’t waiving any of your wider legal rights (now of in the future) or for example, restricting your ability to work or claim compensation without receiving reasonable compensation in return for that.

In addition, many employer’s may try to impose certain restrictions on you that affect your future employment prospects, we can negotiate with them on your behalf to try and come to a reasonable agreement.

It is usual for your employer to pay or make a significant contribution towards your legal costs for seeking advice with regards to a Settlement Agreement, we can advise you further on this and negotiate with your employer with regards to costs.

When a settlement agreement cannot be reached through negotiation between an employer and an employee, the matter may proceed to court or an employment tribunal. In the court process, parties are encouraged to follow pre-action protocols before issuing a claim, which may be heard in the Employment Tribunal, County Court, or High Court, depending on the case’s nature and complexity. Court proceedings involve evidence exchange, case management hearings, and trial preparation, with opportunities for mediation and settlement negotiations at any stage. If no settlement is reached, the case goes to trial, and the court issues a judgment. In the Employment Tribunal process, early conciliation through ACAS is mandatory before filing a claim. After filing, both parties exchange information, and if necessary, a preliminary hearing is held. The main hearing follows, where evidence is presented, witnesses testify, and a judgment is issued. Throughout both processes, parties are encouraged to seek resolution through settlement negotiations to avoid the full trial, and legal advice is crucial to understand their rights and options.

Once terms are offered or are being discussed you will need specialist legal advice.

If you don’t have an offer or terms yet but you are in dispute, we can often even help you propose settlement terms with your employer, in certain circumstances, whilst also protecting your legal rights.

There are many approaches we can take to assessing, advising and negotiating exit terms by way of a Settlement Agreement, because we specialise in employment law our team of solicitors know how to work with you to ensure you take the right approach for you.

Factors such as your own personal circumstances, how amicable or not the terms are in each case, timing costs and sensitivity all come into play but in all cases you do need an expert to protect your interests and that’s where we come in.

The legal context and overall value and background must be assessed by an expert, this is where we help you, you don’t have to accept the terms and they aren’t always correctly prepared or indeed adequate!

In some cases, payments are in fact inadequate and employees can be getting little to no benefit from signing an agreement and thus, we are often able to present an improved legal position with a view improving your exit terms for you for example, increasing Compensation and benefits and reducing legal obligations simply by using our expertise to assess the merits of your claims and your legal entitlements from your employer which can often include:

• Length of service and correct notice and redundancy calculations
• Pension entitlements prior to and upon exit
• Bonus and other share or incentive plans and timing exit to get the best we can
• Holiday accrual and correct pay calculations
• Legal issues in dispute and a correct legal valuation of compensation in your case
• Expenses claims and disputes over the same
• Costs, assessment and employer’s contribution
• Taxation and timing of payments (we have trusted expert partners who plan and advise on this aspect)
• References and further employment – ensuring all sums are paid and you are free to move on
• Reducing your legal obligations – for example, employers often seek to include claw-back provisions based upon specific events or obligations, we seek it withdraw or qualify these

We are very experienced in helping senior executives, Directors and business owners with exit terms both preparing them and advising on them.

Additional factors to consider here are (including but not limited to) our specialist legal assessment of:

• Share and equity interests (working with regulated corporate and tax advisors to assess values and liabilities)
• Long Term Incentive Plans
• Share Options
• Loan agreements and/or liabilities
• Directors loans and liabilities
• Directorships and offices including necessary insurance and liabilities for period of tenure
• Any related obligations that must be released including bank or other guarantees, legal indemnities
• Correct legal assessment and considered negotiations of restrictions from competitive activity can mean the difference between you being able to work and earn a living or not, this really does require specialist advice to protect your interests
• Confidentiality and other proprietary rights are also crucial and must be considered to ensure clarity on what you can and can’t use in future employment

We frequently negotiate reductions or releases and settlement terms on such matters often working with specialist corporate law and regulated tax and finance partners, we have an excellent track record of steering clients to successful agreements.

Careful legal review of all terms and obligations of a senior executive, Director and/or shareholder is crucial for all parties to avoid costly legal dispute.

Only through carefully examining the law applicable to your case along with the facts, the terms of employment and other interests and all related benefits and offices all together can you correctly assess whether the terms offered provide you with what you are entitled to and ensure that all of your interests and legal rights are protected.

We have a very experienced and specialist team of employment solicitors and legal executives, we have considerable strength and depth with a combined practice 30 years of experience within this specialist are of law, we specialise in this often complex area of law and can often achieve results for a fixed initial fee.

We are very clear on legal fees and we provide costs ranges and fixed estimates, you will be clear on what you are paying and why – our aim is to provide expert legal advice for excellent value.

We do often recover further costs from your employer as part of the settlement terms, because we prepare settlement terms for employers we also understand how to negotiate them for either party and we have many years of successful experience in doing so.