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Employment law retainer

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Our employment law team are proud to offer their annual retainer to clients to give peace of mind, personalised, dedicated support and cost certainty.

YEAR (Your Employment Annual Retainer) is designed for businesses of all sizes that need regular, on-demand advice from legal specialists without the worry of escalating fees. YEAR clients benefit from a dedicated lead adviser who takes time to understand your business, and a secondary adviser who’s always up to speed - ensuring you will always get a responsive, consistent service.

Managing employment law and HR matters can be complex, particularly when time is tight and legal risks are high. Our fixed-fee Employment Law Retainer (YEAR) offers unlimited access to our expert employment law solicitors for a predictable monthly cost, giving you peace of mind, priority support, and budgetary control. Whether you’re dealing with employee disputes, contracts, redundancy, disciplinary issues or day-to-day HR queries, our retainer service ensures you're covered with dependable legal advice, when you need it most.

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Further information

YEAR memberships >

Optional Add-ons >

FAQs >

YEAR memberships

We understand that one size doesn't fit all which is why we offer a variety of YEAR memberships, providing you and your business with the support needed whenever it's required.

YEAR is a flexible fixed-fee employment law service that aims to revolve around your business needs. We appreciate that you will not require our services every day or you may not require any advice for weeks at a time, however, when you do need us we are on hand and your bill is fixed and invoiced on the same day every month… so, no nasty surprises.

YEAR

Unlimited employment law advice from qualified solicitors
A dedicated primary legal adviser, so you have a central point of contact
A dedicated secondary legal adviser
An audit to review your existing HR documents and identify areas of improvement*
Staff handbook and employment contracts updates
Bespoke letters
Access to the wider firm, with options to explore support and services from other legal teams
Fixed fee monthly billing
Optional legal expenses insurance
Optional access to Ignite – a HR portal operated by Albion Legal
A team that you can trust and that will be there for you every day – in person, remotely, on the phone or via email – you decide

YEAR Plus

For those who need a little extra support and guidance, there is the option to upgrade to our YEAR PLUS membership, which means a member of our employment law team will visit you at your premises to deliver bespoke sessions for you and your team.

These sessions are tailored to suit your needs and can include HR training, chairing of hearings and/or face-to-face advice.

YEAR Personalise

YEAR Personalise offers you the opportunity to bespoke your YEAR package to best suit your business.

YEAR Personalise provides a tailored package to fit the needs of your business and allows additional flexibility outside of YEAR Plus and YEAR Premium.

Optional add-ons to your YEAR membership

We also offer additional services that you can add on to complement your YEAR membership.

Ignite

HR administrative duties often take up a substantial period of time, with this only being furthered by difficulties in accessing employee information. This is why we have partnered with Albion Legal to provide our clients with the option to sign up to a HR Portal, Ignite. The intention behind Ignite is to reduce the time and resources employers will be required to devote to HR admin, enabling employers to focus on other important aspects of their business, whilst having the comfort and reassurance that employee information and important documentation is not only safely stored, but easily accessible when required.

Ignite has endless vital features that can help employers deal with a variety of day-to-day tasks, including the recording of sickness absence, holiday entitlement, company policies and procedures, as well as arranging important employee meetings and compiling reports to help review sectors of the business and update accordingly, if necessary.

Legal expenses insurance

We appreciate that Employment Tribunal claims can be costly for employers and therefore, as a precautionary measure, businesses often want to take out insurance as protection to cover for this future eventuality. Legal expenses insurance helps to cover some of the costs a business may face if they receive an Employment Tribunal claim against them, the amount of such costs depends on the level of cover in place.

If you would be interested in exploring this further, we will put you in touch with our insurance provider, Albion Legal, who can help you get the right level of cover for your business.

Our expert employment law team

Please also take a look at our main employment law pages to read more about our employment team generally. We also have expertise in the following areas:

FAQs

Is training provided?
As part of our 'YEAR' package, we host workshops and seminars keeping you up to date with the latest changes in employment legislation or offering advice on both employment law and HR issues encountered by our clients.

Our most popular training packages are:
Training is designed by experienced employment law solicitors, and supported by our HR professionals.

We can also design tailored made workshops, seminars and training programmes to help clients with specific issues within their business, which can be delivered in house to HR and senior management teams or on a one to one basis.

Our training programmes can cover any HR or employment law topic, and we are happy to speak with you about any training needs. Previous courses have included:
- HR skills for business;
- Effective mentoring in the workplace;
- Conducting successful employee reviews;
- Recruitment, interviewing and selection;
- Employment law for HR professionals;
- Employment law for business owners;
- Absence management, bullying and discrimination;
- Conducting a grievance investigation; and
- Performance management and dismissals.
What is Ignite?

HR administrative duties often take up a substantial period of time, with this only being furthered with difficulties in accessing employee information. This is why we have partnered with Albion Legal to provide our clients with the option to sign up to a HR Portal, Ignite. The intention behind Ignite is to reduce the time and resources employers will be required to devote to HR admin, enabling employers to focus on other important aspects of their business, whilst having the comfort and reassurance that employee information and important documentation is not only safely stored, but easily accessible when required.

Ignite has endless vital features which can help employers deal with a variety of day-to-day tasks, including the recording of sickness absence, holiday entitlement, company policies and procedures, as well as arranging important employee meetings and compiling reports to help review sectors of the business, and update accordingly, if necessary.

Click here see what Ignite has to offer.
Is YEAR for my business?

Our current YEAR clients are made up of a number of different businesses, across different sectors, different sizes and alternative management and HR structures.

For small to medium businesses with little or no HR team or support, our team can be on hand to help with all the issues that arise daily, draft any documents and letters and provide a general HR support system for the management team within your business.

For larger organisations our team can support existing HR Managers with the more complex and technical issues that do not arise on a daily basis.

YEAR is for everyone and can be adapted to your business needs. This is a service for your business.
How is my YEAR quote calculated?

Unlike many similar retained employment law services on the market, we do not operate from a fixed pricing structure. All of our YEAR quotes are bespoke and based on your business. The two pieces of information we require to provide you with a YEAR quote is your annual wage bill and your current number of employees.
What is not covered in my YEAR membership?

At present any advice about TUPE, redundancies of over 20 employees and tribunal claims are not included in a YEAR subscription. Whilst advice in relation to internal process such as disciplinary and grievance procedures is included in a YEAR subscription, if you require us to chair meetings on your behalf, this would not be included, and we will provide you with a bespoke quote for this.

We operate on a transparent pricing structure so if any such issues were to arise, we would provide you with a precise quote for the costs anticipated and keep you updated as to our fee’s on your account.

Alongside YEAR membership, we are also pleased to offer the opportunity of optional legal expenses cover in the eventuality of any employment or HR issue we have previously advised on progressing to a tribunal. The legal expenses insurance would provide a contribution towards legal fees, barrister costs and insurance on any potential payout.

Get in touch to request a bespoke YEAR quote

Tina Chander

Key contact

Tina is head of our employment law team. She deals with contentious and non-contentious employment law issues. Tina also heads the firm's business group.

Phone

01926 884687

Email Address

tina.chander@wrighthassall.co.uk

Meet the team

"I cannot imagine working without the support of Wright Hassall with local [UK] employment law matters. I know I can rely on the team to provide sound and timely advice, and even to raise the considerations we may overlook."

Susan Meda HR Business Partner, EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems