Slate Legal rated top 3 in Newport for employment law

The Managing Partner of Slate Legal has been recognised as one of the top 3 employment law solicitors in Newport – less than two years after setting up his fresh thinking firm.

James Moss has been awarded this recognition by the international recommendation website ‘Three Best Rated’. The website carries out a 50-point reputation check, which includes aspects such as history, complaints, reviews, client satisfaction, trust and cost.

The site concludes that the leading employment lawyer, from Newport, stood out with his superb client care, quality standards and extensive employment law experience gained over the past 17 years of advising businesses of all sizes, including FTSE 100 listed companies as well as advising a wide range of employees and directors.

James has already been independently recommended in both the Legal 500 UK and Chambers & Partners legal directories. In 2015, the Legal 500 UK described him as “brilliant.” In 2016 and 2017, he was ranked as a “leading employment lawyer in Wales” in the Chambers & Partners legal directories. 

His skills in dealing with Employment Tribunal cases have also been independently recognized by the Legal 500 UK in its 2014 edition in which he was “recommended, for contentious work, and is noted for his ‘expert knowledge’ and ‘robust representation’”.

Managing Partner of Slate Legal, James Moss, said today:
“At Slate Legal we work extremely hard to maintain the high standards that we are known for across England & Wales. To be recommended as one of the top 3 employment law solicitors in Newport, my home city and where Slate Legal is based, is great.  I would like to thank Three Best Rated for assessing and subsequently listing us on their website so that potential clients can find out more details about Slate Legal.”

You can find more information about Slate Legal by visiting its website www.slatelegal.co.uk, following it on twitter @Slate_Legal or emailing info@slatelegal.co.uk.
 

Employment Rates & Compensation Limits: 6 April 2017 - 5 April 2018

Every April, in order to take account of inflation, the UK government updates certain rates and limits which affect how much compensation can be awarded by an Employment Tribunal for particular types of claims.

To download our handy table (pdf) summarising the new employment rates and compensation limits from 6 April 2017 - 5 April 2018 inclusive, please click HERE.  

Any relevant HR policies should be updated to reflect these changes.

We hope you will find this table to be a useful reference tool. As always, if you have any queries on this or any other employment law issue, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Feel free to follow us on Twitter @Slate_Legal for the latest updates on key employment law cases and issues as well as links to useful articles.

Looking back at 2016

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).

James Moss, Slate Legal's Managing Partner, pictured far right with other Newport Foodbank volunteers.

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.

How to survive the Office Christmas Party!

As Office Christmas Party season gets underway, check out our latest article in the December edition of East Wales' favourite magazine, Voice:

'How to survive the Office Christmas Party - 4 top tips from an employment lawyer'.