The Legal 500

Work Department

European litigation; employment.

Position

Nicola is a partner and head of the London employment team. She specialises in all aspects of employment law, both contentious and non-contentious, including ‘surgery-style’ counselling, tribunal cases and the employment aspects of corporate transactions. Specific representative recent transactions include the following: advised and represented a leading financial institution in relation to grievance and disciplinary proceedings involving whistleblowing, personal injury and discrimination allegations and successfully avoiding any resulting claim; defended an international software company against a multi-strand discrimination, unfair dismissal and whistleblowing claim by a vexatious litigant; advised a leading financial institution in relation to employee matters on two parent and local level mergers with other leaders in the field, including implementing a complete harmonisation of terms and conditions by way of dismissal and re-engagement of all the employees and ongoing advice on issues relating to a proposed takeover; represented a leading global financial services company in a concurrent UK High Court and US District Court action (including anti-suit injunction) arising from breach of restrictive covenants and consequent forfeiture of restricted stock by a senior international executive.

Career

Before joining Orrick, Nicola was a senior associate in the London employment team of Jones Day. Her publications include: ‘New Grounds for Unlawful Discrimination Highlighted’; ‘How to cope when your top team resigns’; ‘You and Your Temp Secretary: Maybe not so Temporary – Association Foreign Banks Newsletter’; ‘Cross-border enforcement of post-employment restrictions and protection of trade secrets – AFB Newsletter article’. Nicola regularly presents seminars and client training exercises on a range of employment-related topics, including TUPE, contracts, unfair dismissal, working time, enforcement of cross-border restrictive covenants and trade secrets, financial services remuneration practices, employment status, team moves, redundancy practice and procedure, works councils and other consultation issues, discrimination and data protection.

Member

Law Society of England and Wales; Employment Lawyer’s Association; American Bar Association International Bar Association.

Education

College of Law of England and Wales, Chester (1994 LPC); University of Wales (1993 LLB).

Practice Areas

Employment; Litigation - commercial