Julie Taylor
Senior Associate

T: 01635 508181
E: [email protected]

Julie Taylor

Senior Associate

Julie is a Senior Associate at Gardner Leader in the Commercial team.

Julie is an employment law and HR specialist. She helps a variety of organisations manage all their employment law obligations. This ranges from drafting effective contracts and policies to govern the working relationship, including for volunteers and casual staff, to recommending the best way to resolve or manage disputes. Julie also advises regularly on the terms of settlement agreements for both employers and employees.

For the companies that Julie works with, she looks to provide practical, straightforward advice aimed at reducing the risk of facing employment litigation as a consequence of crucial business decisions and also ensuring they are appropriately protected with effective contracts and policies.

For individuals, Julie advises on the types of employment claims they may have or what risks they may have in pursuing possibly competing opportunities outside of their current employment.

Julie runs HR Exchange meetings with Michelle Bailey from People’s Essentials in Newbury for employers to come together to share ideas and experiences where they have been given HR responsibility and writes a quarterly employment update to help raise awareness of employment law developments.

Employment Law Experience

Recent non-contentious work includes:

Drafting employment contracts and staff handbooks.
Advising on a redundancy procedure and restructuring process.
Advice on a capability procedure in accordance with the ACAS Code of Practice and the Company’s own procedure to manage an under-performing employee.
Assessing the options where action was proposed regarding a breach of restrictive covenants.
Advice on procedure for obtaining consent to assess the medical condition of an absent employee.
Advising on the application of TUPE to a business transfer and the associated procedures.

Recent contentious work includes:

Successfully defending a company from a claim for holiday pay from a self-employed contractor who asserted he was a worker.
Successfully defended a company from an automatic unfair dismissal claim following a TUPE transfer.
Secured a significant settlement for a claimant following a five day tribunal hearing that upheld claims of automatic unfair dismissal following a TUPE transfer.
Experience of disability discrimination and sex discrimination claims.
Numerous matters have also been negotiated to a settlement on behalf of both claimants and companies.

Legal Directories and Awards

In the 2019 Legal 500 Ranking, Julie was recommended in Employment and Health and Safety and was noted as being “hardworking, calm and user-friendly”.

Memberships and Professional Bodies

Julie is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association and Industrial Law Society and has previously taken part in working parties addressing new government proposals to amend employment law.