Working overtime

There is no polite way of getting around it -employment lawyers are often at their busiest when there are redundancies about.

So it was probably not a good omen that more than 400 of them descended on the troubled Millennium Dome just before it was thrown a 29 million 'lifeline' by the government last month.In actual fact, the lawyers were at the Dome for the Employment Lawyers Association's annual dinner and not touting for work.

It was a record-breaking attendance for the group which is only eight years old and already has more than 1,300 members.

It has been a good year for this sector of the profession and many firms are reporting that they have more work than they can handle.'Everyone will say they are frantically busy,' predicts Yvonne Gallagher, head of employment law at City firm Lawrence Graham.

The present good fortune of employment lawyers contradicts the 'counter-cyclical' theory that they are quiet in boom times and busy when things go to bust.

In this period of economic growth they are busier than ever, Ms Gallagher reckons.'One thing that has been very evident in this boom is that redundancies and cut-backs haven't really gone away,' she says.

'Just as lots of businesses are setting up and taking people on, there are as many having to shed staff.' She believes that merger activity is a significant contributing factor to the state of affairs at the moment.Ronnie Fox, senior partner at London firm Fox Williams and the chairman of the Association of Partnership Practitioners, agrees and notes that work has been streaming in over the last year, much of it generated by the intensification of competition between the banks.In investment banking, the recent bout of merger mania has kept the lawyers busy.

Mr Fox cites the recent acquisition by Citibank of Schroders, the near-merger of the German banks Dresdner and Deutsche Bank, and the Royal Bank of Scotland's takeover of NatWest and Coutts.

'Each time it's change and that creates a lot of work for employment lawyers,' he says.

As a consequence of this frantic activity, Mr Fox has been drafting employment contracts with 'golden hellos' and guaranteed bonuses; advising on notice periods and 'garden leave' clauses; and negotiating terminations 'with very large figures'.Another reason for the increased workload is that there is a lot more employment law on the statute books since New Labour came into office.

As Ronnie Fox points out, the subject is close to the heart of the government.

'We've got a Prime Minister who is an employment lawyer, the prime minister's wife is an employment lawyer, and so is the Lord Chancellor,' he says.Last year's ambitious Employment Relations Act introduced no less than 42 new or improved employee rights which included the return of compulsory trade union recognition, greater parental leave and unfair dismissal rights.

Other major initiatives include the introduction of a national minimum wage and the Public Interest Disclosure Act to protect whistle-blowers.Janet Gaymer, vice-president of the Employment Lawyer's Association and partner at City firm Simmons & Simmons, reckons that there is an on-going re-evaluation of people's rights in the work place.

In particular, she says there is an important conceptual issue about the 'expanded notion' of who is a worker.

Central to the debate is whether rights should extend to a wider group of workers, such as part-time or contract staff, who have previously not had statutory protection.It is a shift in attitude that employers have yet to come to terms with, Ms Gaymer believes.

'They are almost going to have put themselves in the shoes of the lawyers and ask themselves some critical questions about these workers.' And, of course, once they ask those questions they will be on the telephone to their lawyers.Beyond the government's employment law programme, there is the all-pervasive Human Rights Act 1998 which comes into force in October.

Ms Gaymer says there is a 'divided view' about its impact on workers' rights but she has no doubts about its potential effect.

'It's going to be a new weapon for all concerned and it's also going to be a shield,' she says.

A human rights argument could become a familiar feature of employment cases.

For example, it could be used by an ex-employee arguing that the reason why he was dismissed infringed his rights.Another relatively new piece of legislation is the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

John McMullen, national head of employment law at Pinsent Curtis, reports a 'steep increase' in discrimination claims.

'People are becoming more aware of their rights,' he says.'Disability discrimination is being used not just by people who want [job] interviews who happen to be disabled, but by people who are long-term sick in employment'.

He also expects that the newly launched Disability Rights Commission, with a substantial 11 million budget andstatutory remit to bring test cases, will make its presence felt.

Just last week, the Commission brought its first court case.The legislation is not just about people in wheelchairs, says Yvonne Gallagher; it also applies to mental and psychological conditions.

Of particular concern to employers is the uncertain status of staff absent through stress or depression and whether they qualify as disabled.

'Virtually all of our major clients have somebody off sick in those circumstances and they all need advice to manage the process,' she says.Firms with substantial employment expertise are recruiting to meet extra demand from their clients.

'There's more work coming in than many employment law departments can deal with,' says Janet Gaymer.

But she claims that this has led to a problem - a dearth of senior experienced employment lawyers.

They are working so hard that they do not have the chance to look around for other jobs, Ms Gaymer suggests.

Elsewhere, north-west firm Mace & Jones is expanding in different ways.

'I think there is a coming together of the disciplines,' notes head of employment law Martin Edwards.

The firm has brought its pensions and employee benefitssection into the department as part of a multi-disciplinary approach, and has established a health and safety unit incorporating the head of the criminal department.Indeed, the multi-disciplinary approach extends to bringing non-lawyers into the department with this month's launch of a human resources unit staffed by two HR professionals.

They will work for clients on a project basis and will advise on, for example, merger issues or Investment In People accreditation.

Similarly, several big national law firms have been taking on non-lawyers to set up human resources and employee benefits consultancies.Traditionally the employment department was either a stand-alone unit or an aspect of thecorporate work, but now it is more central to the practice, Mr Edwards observes.Ronnie Fox could not agree more.

'The days when employment law was seen as corporate support or another division of litigation are now over.

The sector has finally been recognised as a specialisation in its own right,' he says.

NO LONGER A CINDERELLA LAWYERFrom humble beginnings as an informal lunch club in 1991, the Employment Lawyers Association (ELA) has now become an established practitioner group with more than 1,300 members, reports Sue Allen.

This year, newly elected chairman Jane Mann, head of employment at London firm Fox Williams, says she will lead the group into the 'next generation'.Although only elected to the top slot this year, Ms Mann was a founding parent of the association, alongside Simmons & Simmons' employment partner Janet Gaymer and Fraser Younson, now of US firm McDermott Will & Emery.

Since the first questionnaires were sent out back in 1991, the three founders moved quickly to set up a steering committee and to the formal launch of the ELA a year later.

Apparently, the association's constitution was the handiwork of Ms Mann and from the start, it has built strong regional groups and forged close links with the Bar.According to Ms Mann, who started out at McKenna & Co in 1981, City firms used to treat employment as the 'Cinderella department'.

Employment teams were there to service the corporate groups and were not seen as very profitable, she says.

The situation prompted her move to the smaller City firm of Fox Williams, where she had 'more say in developing a department to its full potential'.Ms Mann says her aim for her year in office is to pass on the knowledge of running the group to the 'next generation' of employment lawyers and to bring new people into the group.

Alongside that aim, her two specific goals are to increase awareness and take-up of alternative dispute resolution in employment cases and to improve the group's new Web site - www.elaweb.org.ukThe next step for the ELA's Web site, she says, is to build links with publishers, and to encourage information and comment from employment specialists on changes in legislation and case law.

She hopes the site will also prove a source of support and information to high street employers.So far as ADR is concerned, Ms Mann says take-up amongst employment lawyers is still quite low.

'Lawyers often argue over complex, fine points of law about issues.

Employment lawyers, like others, should be able to get round a table and sort problems out reasonably and in everyone's best interests.

The ELA is very interested in ADR and very keen to promote it,' she adds.With employment lawyers still recovering from the shock of rafts of new legislation and case law in recent years, Ms Mann warns that there will be little downtime before the next big thing, the Human Rights Act 1998 which comes into force in October.

The Act will influence the workings of tribunals but as yet no one knows quite how far reaching its impact will be, she says.And are solicitors becoming better employers? Ms Mann says like all professions, law firms suffer from the fact that partners are not trained as managers.

'Partners may excel as lawyers, but they often have no management aptitude and the firm's management systems and structures may not be quite as up-to-date as those of companies.'However, the pressure for higher salaries and increased competition between firms means people are working harder over longer hours to keep clients.

Partners and their employees also need to be more 'realistic on the money side' if they want a more balanced life, she says.