It’s been a good first year for Slate Legal. We’ve beaten our initial targets and picked up excellent independent rankings from the UK’s leading legal directories.  In September the UK Legal 500 recommended us and our Managing Partner, James Moss for employment law and, in November, Chambers & Partners UK ranked James Moss as a leading employment lawyer in Wales.

We’ve helped clients from a wide variety of backgrounds across England and Wales navigate the employment law minefield and protect their rights, including:

• advising a UK corporate on a restructure and redundancy programme;
• representing the MD of a leading EU financial services company on secondment to the US, facing the prospect of a career limiting dismissal.  The matter involved multi-jurisdictional issues across 3 countries.  We worked with foreign lawyers to obtain the best possible (six figure) outcome for our client;
• advising a political party on a sensitive matter involving potential Employment Tribunal proceedings by one of its candidates;
• representing a whistleblower who’d been automatically unfairly dismissed after raising serious health and safety concerns, negotiating a five figure settlement for him without having to issue proceedings;
• advising a vet practice on the employment aspects of restructuring its business, including redundancies and collective consultation obligations;
• advising multiple employees from senior executives to bankers, lawyers, managers, post-office staff and police staff on settlement agreements and complex cases involving sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion & belief discrimination, holiday pay, unfair, wrongful and constructive dismissals;
• advising a national employer on complex data protection and misconduct issues.

We’ve remained true to our core values and our clients regard us as a trusted adviser, in fact 100% of our clients would recommend us, against the legal industry average of 22%. We’ve been really pleased with client feedback:

“I was extremely pleased with the way my case was handled by Slate Legal. The service was professional, competent and prompt and I would not hesitate to recommend their services to my friends and family.”

“Thank you so much. There have been so many kind people helping along this journey and you're one of them thank you.”

“James was sensitive and compassionate to what was an embarrassing personal and professional matter; his sensitivity, patience and ‘plain English’ gave me a thorough peace of mind and I would not hesitate to recommend James and Slate Legal to friends and clients.”

“I would highly recommend Slate Legal for any employment law advice. James was extremely professional and efficient yet also personable and friendly and was available to answer all of my questions, thus putting me at ease throughout what was potentially a very stressful process! Thanks for all of your help.”

“Thank you again for your input James, it was indeed valuable in getting them to take my complaints seriously.”

“I contacted James Moss on being made redundant and having to sign various legal documents.  He met with me and explained the whole procedure to me in a kind and friendly manner, putting me at my ease and making the process very smooth.  I would highly recommend using James as I found the service very friendly and efficient."

“I would like to thank you for the prompt and professional service you provided.  It was certainly a great comfort knowing you were guiding me along a path which I never expected to tread.  I wish you all the very best with your practice.  I will certainly be recommending your services should I see an opportunity to do so.”

Since day one we've adopted sustainable working practices and have seen the benefits of doing so.

Where appropriate, we’ve applied artificial intelligence from Fujitsu, using Optical Character Recognition software, to help speed up data analysis during the disclosure stage in document-heavy Tribunal cases with resulting savings in time and costs for our clients.

In September, along with hundreds of other law firms, we took part in the Legal Sustainability Alliance Travel Challenge, which aimed to encourage sustainable forms of travel during the working week and at weekends. We even managed to top the leader board for week three!

We had a great response to our pro bono initiative timed to coincide with Small Business Saturday on 3 December 2016. Over the course of that morning we advised 3 businesses (2 from England, 1 from Wales) as well as 3 employees (2 from Wales and 1 from England).

We’ve also enjoyed supporting our Charity of the Year 2016, Newport Foodbank, by helping out at Tesco food collections and by making a financial donation – because we too don’t think anyone in our local community should have to face going hungry.

We're active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Follow us for employment law updates and to engage with us.

We look forward to continuing to support our clients and engaging with new ones in 2017.