What this seat involves
Employment law sits between advisory and contentious work. On the advisory side: contracts, policies, redundancy processes, TUPE transfers, restrictive covenants, and the employment aspects of corporate transactions. On the contentious side: Employment Tribunal claims (unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing), High Court injunctions to enforce restrictive covenants, and regulatory investigations.
The client base tends to be more varied than in transactional seats; corporate employers, financial institutions, senior executives, and occasionally employee groups. The work is often time-sensitive because employment situations escalate quickly and the legal framework has strict procedural timelines.
Trainee-level work this seat is built around
You may not be asked to run all of this on a vacation scheme. This section explains the kind of work trainees and junior lawyers do, so the seat and its exercises make sense in context.
Contract and policy drafting
Drafting or reviewing employment contracts, service agreements for senior executives, and workplace policies. Small drafting differences have real employment law consequences.
Tribunal claim research
Researching the legal framework for a particular claim; unfair dismissal, disability discrimination, whistleblowing; and summarising it for the team. The ET Rules of Procedure matter here.
ET1 and ET3 review
Reading the claimant's ET1 and helping draft the respondent's ET3. This involves extracting the key allegations and identifying where they are legally or factually weak.
Settlement agreement drafting
Helping draft settlement agreements for departing employees. Includes understanding the statutory requirements for validity and the commercial terms the client needs protected.
TUPE due diligence
On corporate transactions or outsourcing deals, reviewing the employment population to assess TUPE obligations; who transfers, on what terms, and what the risks are for the acquiring entity.
Advice letters and attendance notes
Drafting follow-up advice letters from client calls. The output is often advice on a specific HR decision; whether a disciplinary process was followed correctly, whether a redundancy selection is defensible.
What you could do on a vacation scheme
Vacation scheme exercises are usually lighter than trainee work. They are designed to test research, document sense, commercial judgement and how clearly you explain unfamiliar material.
Policy or contract review
You may be asked to read an employment contract, staff policy or settlement agreement and explain the practical purpose of key provisions.
Claim issue spotting
You may be given a short workplace scenario and asked to identify potential issues such as unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing or process risk.
Short legal research
You may be asked to research a basic employment law test and apply it to a simple fact pattern, making clear what further facts would change the answer.
Allegations summary
You may be asked to read a claimant’s short account and separate factual allegations from legal claims, then identify what the employer would need to evidence in response.
What good looks like at this stage
Clarify the task, have a proper go before escalating, explain your thinking and return clean work. The best vacation schemers are proactive and curious without creating noise.
Employment law is highly fact-sensitive; the same conduct can be lawful in one context and unlawful in another depending on a company's policies, its prior behaviour, and how the process was followed. A vac schemer who resists giving a definitive answer before understanding the full facts is showing exactly the right instinct.
Research to do before you start
- Understand the key statutory protections: unfair dismissal (qualifying period, fair reasons, procedural fairness), the Equality Act 2010 protected characteristics, and whistleblowing protection under PIDA.
- Know the Employment Tribunal process; how claims are issued, early conciliation through ACAS, the timeline to a final hearing, and the remedies available.
- Read about TUPE; when it applies, what it does to employment terms, and why employers and acquirers care about it on transactions.
- Look at recent employment law developments; changes to zero hours contract regulation, non-compete reform, or significant recent ET or EAT decisions.
- Understand what a settlement agreement requires to be valid and why employers use them rather than simply dismissing employees and waiting.
- Read the firm's employment team profile; do they act predominantly for employers or take employee-side work? Senior executive and financial services work has a different character to volume employer-side advice.
Questions worth asking
Is there a precedent or example you would like me to follow?
Shows you are trying to match the team's style instead of guessing the format.
How much detail would be helpful here: a short summary or a more detailed note?
Clarifies the output before you spend time producing the wrong level of detail.
On the contentious side, is most of the work defending claims at the Employment Tribunal or does a significant amount involve High Court injunctions; restrictive covenant enforcement, team moves, that kind of work?
Shows you know the two different contentious routes exist and that the work differs materially between them.
How much of the employment work here is driven by M&A transactions; TUPE, restructuring post-acquisition; versus standalone advisory mandates?
Employment is deeply connected to corporate transactional work at larger firms. Shows you're thinking about how practice areas relate to each other.
The proposed changes to non-compete clauses have been discussed for some time; has that uncertainty changed how you're drafting restrictive covenants for clients in the meantime?
Topical and specific. Demonstrates you've followed the legislative debate, not just the settled law.
When advising an employer on a potential dismissal, at what point does the advice shift from "how do we do this properly" to "this is too risky, explore settlement"?
A question about commercial judgment. Most employment lawyers have a clear view on this and will give a frank answer.