Employment Lawyer

Role Overview

We are recruiting for an Employment Lawyer to join our highly effective and valued HR team, reporting to the Chief People Officer.

This is a senior role responsible for leading the firm’s employee relations strategy and operational delivery across London and Brussels. The role ensures that all employee relations matters are managed with professionalism, consistency, legal compliance, and commercial pragmatism, while acting as a trusted adviser to partners and senior leaders.

The key responsibilities of this role are set out below and there may be others which are not listed. You may be required on occasion to work outside our normal working hours of 9:30am to 5:30pm.

• Define and lead the firm’s employee relations strategy, aligned to the wider People strategy and business objectives.
• Collaborate with our HR Managers to ensure that we deliver a high-performing employee relations function, balancing legal risk, fairness, and commercial outcomes.
• Provide regular insight and reporting on ER trends, risks, and opportunities, using data to inform decision-making.
• Promote early resolution, mediation, and pragmatic approaches to minimise formal escalation.

• In collaboration with our HR Managers oversee all employee relations cases across the firm to ensure best practice and consistency, including:
• grievances, disciplinaries, and conduct issues
• performance management
• long-term sickness and absence management
• mental health-related cases
• dismissals, settlement agreements, and contractual changes

• Personally lead or advise on complex, sensitive, and high‑profile matters, including those involving partners or senior stakeholders.
• Ensure investigations are conducted with procedural rigor, fairness, confidentiality, and clear documentation.
• Support the HR Managers with restructuring, redundancy, and organisational change programmes from an employee relations perspective.

• Act as a trusted adviser to partners, business services leaders, and people managers on all employee relations matters.
• Equip and support HR Managers to provide high-quality, consistent guidance on employment law, policy, and process.
• Work closely with internal and external legal counsel where specialist advice is required.

• Lead the development, review, and governance of people policies and procedures to ensure alignment with employment law, regulatory requirements, and best practice.
• Ensure HR related policies are regularly reviewed in line with audit and compliance requirements.
• Monitor legal and regulatory developments across the UK and Belgium, adapting policies and practices accordingly.
• Work with Legal, Risk and Compliance to ensure alignment of HR related policies, controls and procedures with regulatory frameworks, including SRA requirements.

• Collate and maintain employee relations data to identify trends, risks, and systemic issues.
• Provide insight-driven recommendations to senior leadership to address emerging challenges.
• Ensure robust case management systems and accurate record-keeping.

• Provide oversight of employee relations matters in the Brussels office, ensuring compliance with Belgian employment law and local requirements.
• Coordinate with local HR and external advisers to ensure consistent standards and effective handling of cross-border matters.

• Enhance employee relations capability across the firm through coaching, knowledge sharing, and practical guidance.
• Design and deliver training for partners and managers on employee relations topics, including performance management…