A firm has been ordered to pay the remainder of a solicitor’s bonus following an employment tribunal claim.
Jurij Osokin was employed at Moss and Coleman Solicitors Limited for four years on a contract which included a 10% bonus of fees billed and recovered in excess of his fee target. In October 2024, he gave three months’ notice. His employment with the London-based firm ended at the end of January 2025 and he was paid the net equivalent of a £4,500 bonus, half of his claimed entitlement.
The firm told the tribunal it had taken the decision ‘sometime after [Osokin] had left the firm’ to reconsider some bills from a probate case on which Osokin had worked. It cited issues with the case as among the reasons why it should not be required to pay the remainder of Osokin’s bonus.
Employment judge J S Burns said Osokin had set out a schedule of his fees showing he billed a total of £260,352 in 2024 - £91,602 over his target of £168,750 and that his 10% bonus should be £9,160.20. The firm, the judgment noted, ‘has not provided any alternative figures of its own’.
Finding Osokin was entitled to the entirety of his bonus, the judge said the firm's assertion that the claim was more complex than a straightforward wages claim was incorrect. He added: ‘It was the respondent which drafted the employment contract, and is now trying to rely on its own claimed drafting shortcomings.’
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The judge regarded Osokin’s as ‘the most reliable and the best evidence as to his entitlements in January 2025 and the [firm] has failed to show that they are inaccurate.’
‘The claimant has identified a significant sum which on the best available evidence he was due as part of his wages and which should have been paid by no later than the end of January 2025. Hence his claim succeeds in the amount of £4,660.20 gross.'
