TUI UK, the UK's largest tourism group and owner of Thomson Holidays, has outsourced its customer services' legal department to legal network Parabis Law on a fixed-cost contract.


All the group's pre-litigation claims, estimated at 1,000 a year, will be handled by Badhams in Croydon, while all litigation work will be dealt with by City-based Plexus Law. Both firms come under the Parabis Law umbrella.


Badhams will take on 12 of the department's part-qualified or non-qualified staff, while TUI is currently seeking roles within the organisation for the remaining eight. Solicitor Ruth Marshall, general manager of the customer legal services department, will remain with TUI UK to oversee the outsourcing process and handle any claims worth more than £500,000.


She said: 'We invited all the firms we already use to tender but we chose Parabis because we have worked with them for many years and the other firms were too small [to take on the team].'


Parabis Law managing partner Tim Oliver said: 'Thomson is going through a redundancy programme in the UK and this will provide certainty for the team. We have negotiated a fixed contract price based on a certain volume of claims. The team transferring to Badhams will be supplemented with additional legal skills by diverting some of our existing team and we will also be looking to recruit externally. '



He added: 'We expect around 100 claims to be litigated per year, which will be dealt with by our existing travel litigation team of ten lawyers at Plexus Law.'