Employment

French employment law is an area in which foreign clients often require a great deal of guidance.

Richard acts for employers and employees in contentious and non-contentious employment matters.

He is particularly experienced in providing advice, assistance and representation for UK and US groups with subsidiaries, branches or other operations in France.

He appears before Employment Tribunals (Conseils de Prud’hommes) at first instance and before the Courts of Appeal and is one of very few British nationals to undertake advocacy work personally before the French courts.

He is often involved at the pre-contentious stage, in cases where difficulties or economic factors have not yet given rise to terminations of employment. At this stage, he intervenes to advise clients on questions of evidence (French proceedings will not normally involve oral witness evidence, so that contemporaneous written exchanges are extremely important) and formal steps which need to be taken under French employment law.

He advises clients setting up operations in France requiring French based employees, drafting employment contracts and advising on terms and conditions of employment. He is often called upon to help clients set up payroll, using local correspondents.

Advice and assistance is provided on all aspects of management of the employment relationship, notably questions of accidents and sickness, holiday pay, discrimination, harassment and modification of terms of employment.

He also advises on termination of contracts, including procedures for termination by agreement (conventions de rupture), approved by the French working inspectorates as well as questions of reorganisations and redundancies.