Emma is an Associate in the Education Department, specialising in employment law. Emma advises education clients on a variety of contentious and non-contentious HR and employment law matters.

Emma is Australian qualified and has acted for both public and private sector education clients on a range of matters including discrimination, harassment and unfair dismissal. Emma’s experience also includes providing specialist and tailored advice to schools on grievances, workplace investigations, disciplinary matters, absence management, restructuring, redundancy, recruitment, contracts of employment, policies and procedures, as well as broader governance strategy for best practice and compliance. Her previous experience also includes providing advice to the New South Wales Department of Education, Australia.

Although Emma’s primary focus is on employment law and HR, she has a keen interest in parental issue and has previously been involved in advising on parental complaints relating to discrimination.

Recent Experience

• Advising schools on handling dismissals, with particular regard to managing risk.
• Advising on governance matters including implementation of anti-discrimination best practice and compliance.
• Advising schools on their obligations to disabled employees and students with regards to reasonable adjustments.
• Development of toolkits for government in house legal teams to respond to complex issues relating to discrimination, safeguarding and work health and safety issues in a school context.
• Advising on internal HR processes including disciplinary, grievance and absence management.
• Reviewing and amending workplace policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the law and good practice.
• Defending claims relating to discrimination, harassment and unfair dismissal.
• Conducting workplace investigations relating to harassment, safeguarding and other matters relating to duty of care to vulnerable people.