Joanna is a Partner and Head of the Employment Department where she handles all areas of contentious and non-contentious employment law. This includes executive terminations, discrimination, wrongful and unfair dismissal, TUPE, large scale reorganisations and contract issues. She regularly advises LLPs on partnership matters and is well versed in the issues that affect their members. Further afield Joanna’s expertise also covers the employment aspects of mergers, acquisitions and flotations, outsourcing, and works councils.

Joanna’s clients are both employers and employees and are drawn from all aspects of business, including investment banks, financial organisations, fashion and luxury goods houses, telecoms, record and television companies, plc directors and bankers.

Joanna is the subject of glowing reviews in both Chambers (“strong work ethic and sense of commercial reality”) and the Legal 500 (“unfailingly provides advice of the highest calibre”). She is listed as a leader in her field by Chambers. On top of all of this she is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association, co-author of the Industrial Society book on Disability Discrimination and lectures regularly on employment law.

Key Experience

Joanna represents a global interdealer broker, including acting for it in major litigation. One of those cases established (in the Employment Appeal Tribunal) that an employee cannot bring proceedings in the Employment Tribunal in respect of matters arising in another jurisdiction, even if that employment was contiguous with employment in the UK.

Joanna has wide experience in the fashion, retail and luxury markets. She is the lead partner providing employment advice to one of the major global luxury goods and fashion groups. This long-standing relationship covers every aspect of the employment spectrum, from strategic advice, to day-to-day queries, to litigation.

Joanna has extensive experience in advising LLPs on partnership and employment issues, and is well versed in dealing with the particular remuneration structures adopted by private equity and venture capital firms, including carried interest schemes. She counts leading private equity firms amongst her clients.

For more than 10 years, Joanna has advised the world's largest music company on its high level, strategic and complex employment matters. She also acts for a number of other significant media players, including television companies.

In addition to her roster of corporate clients, Joanna acts for senior employees in finance and industry, from plc directors to partners in hedge funds. The experience that she has in acting for her corporate clients enables her to have a clear and insightful understanding of the best solutions for individuals, whether in negotiating contracts or team moves, or dealing with termination of employment.

Career History