How to Ensure You Get the Most From the Legal Advice on Your Settlement Agreement

If you’ve received an offer of a settlement agreement, your employer is probably paying for you to get legal advice on it, so you may as well make the most of it!

Here are a few things you can do to help your solicitor to help you.

1. Get all the relevant documents together

Before speaking to your solicitor, make sure you’ve got everything that may be needed. Obviously, you’ll need to show your adviser the settlement agreement but you should also gather other relevant documents, including:

• Your employment contract
• Recent payslips showing how much you’re paid before and after tax
• Any relevant employment policies from the staff handbook, such as disciplinary rules and procedure
• Any correspondence from your employer relating to the termination of your employment.

Your solicitor may not need all of these documents in order to give you the legal advice but it’s useful to have them ready just in case.

2. Obtain an electronic copy of the settlement agreement

Although this is not absolutely necessary, it may help your solicitor if amendments need to be made to the document. For example, the adviser’s details often need to be entered in the agreement. It’s much neater to type these details in rather than write them by hand.

If your solicitor does intend to propose some changes to the document, it’s often useful to type these changes in and email an amended copy to your employer for approval.

3. Provide your employer’s contact details

Often, your solicitor will need to contact your employer to negotiate or simply to clarify a few points. So, be ready to provide contact information, such as:

• the contact name of the person dealing with the settlement agreement for your employer (this may be someone in HR, a line manager or possibly an external HR consultant or lawyer)
• their job title
• an email address
• a telephone number (preferably a direct line or a mobile number)
• a postal address.

Having all of these details to pass to your solicitor can help to make the process much quicker and easier.

4. Be ready to tell your story to your solicitor

What are the circumstances leading to your employment ending? Is it a redundancy? Is it performance related? Do you feel it’s fair?

It’s important to explain all of this to your solicitor so that you can be advised on how much you should be entitled to by way of a termination payment. You may want to write down the main points before your consultation.