At Morton Fraser Lawyers we have highlighted clarity as our guiding principle.
This directs the way we communicate, the way we advise, the way we conduct relationships with our clients and the way we are totally transparent and upfront about our charges. This applies to all our services from the straightforward to the more complex.
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Our specialist employment solicitors based in Edinburgh and Glasgow deal with settlement agreements every day. You may be asked to sign a settlement agreement if you have a dispute with your employer, if your employment is coming to an end or if you are being paid an enhanced redundancy payment. You are required to take legal advice for the settlement agreement to be valid and your employer will very often pay your legal fees.
Innes is head of our Litigation Division, one of the largest and most experienced litigation teams in Scotland. Innes is an accredited specialist in employment law and also heads up our highly rated employment law team based in our Edinburgh and Glasgow offices. Innes is listed in the elite "Leading lawyers" list in the Legal 500 UK 2020 guide to outstanding lawyers nationwide.
We'll cut though the legal jargon and provide you with a clear understanding of what you are signing. If you would like us to negotiate on your behalf we will work swiftly to get you the best deal possible.
All of our employment law solicitors have a huge amount of experience of negotiating and advising on settlement agreements in a wide variety of circumstances.
We have more Law Society of Scotland accredited employment law specialists than any other team in Scotland. The team is rated by both Chambers and Legal 500 as one of the best in Scotland.
As well as providing clear advice we guarantee that we will be transparent on costs.
If you are asked to sign a settlement agreement it's very often the case that your employer will pay your legal fees. We offer two separate fee structures:
Advice only
Advice and negotiation
Our 'advice only' service is designed for circumstances where you're content with the terms of the settlement and simply want to have the agreement concluded as soon as possible.
If we agree to provide an 'advice only' service we'll do the work for the contribution to legal fees being made by your employer. While we reserve the right to request an increase in the contribution from your employer, you won't need to pay any additional fee.
If, having been advised about the effects of the settlement agreement, you no longer wish to agree to it, you will still need to pay us the 'advice only' fee but our fee will be restricted to the amount that your employer would have contributed had you signed the agreement.
Our 'advice and negotiation' service is designed for circumstances where you are not content with the level of compensation being offered or any significant term in the settlement agreement (such as a lack of reference or inclusion of restrictive covenants) and you want to have the settlement agreement negotiated on your behalf.
We will charge for this service based on how much of our time you need. Before starting we will advise you of the hourly rates that we will charge. We will also advise you of the likely level of our fee.
If you use our 'advice & negotiation' service, we will attempt to negotiate the legal fees contribution made by your employer so that it covers our fee. There is usually a limit to the level of fees that an employer will contribute but we will try to maximise this as much as possible to minimise the amount that you pay.
You will require to pay the difference between the contribution that your employer is making and our total fee (if it is greater than the employer contribution).
Market standing: "They have a first-class employment department."
