Lawyers

Navi Atwal

Navi Atwal

Shoosmiths LLP, South East

Work Department

Employment

Position

Navi is a Senior Associate based in our Milton Keynes office and provides strategic and commercial advice on a wide range of contentious and non-contentious employment law issues.

Navi advises a wide range of national clients, including a number of commercial household brands, in a range of sectors including, logistics, retail, higher education and energy. Whilst Navi primarily advises employers, she has supported individual employees in successfully negotiating settlements and advising on post-termination restrictions.

Navi manages a number of complex employment tribunal claims for employers, which includes defending allegations of unfair and constructive unfair dismissal, holiday pay and discrimination claims. Navi has a particular interest in employee data protection matters and is a member of employment data protection team.

Navi prides herself in knowing her clients’ businesses and building strong relationships with HR teams. This provides her with valuable insight into the business, enabling an understanding of a client’s preferred outcomes and for Navi to provide pragmatic, tailored advice.

Navi’s recent experience includes:

successfully negotiating a complex, multi-claim disability discrimination claim which had been running for over three years for a logistics client, avoiding a 12 day Final Hearing. This involved working as an extension to the Legal and HR Team in providing strategic advice in relation to a claimant who had raised over 15 grievances, and five separate claim forms; advising a global finance software technology platform in the management of a TUPE-related, business merger and subsequent redundancy process; robustly defending disability discrimination claims for a higher education institution, with a valuation by the claimant close to £1 million; providing strategic day-to-day advice on a number of employee relation issues, including, long-term absence issues, disciplinaries, grievances and redundancies; working to protect clients' business interests in connection with the exits of senior employees and team moves, including successfully negotiating exits for key employees; regularly carrying out advocacy in the Employment Tribunal, successfully representing clients at case management and substantive preliminary hearings in relation to jurisdictional issues; supporting and working closely with corporate colleagues in relation to the employment aspects of national and global sales, acquisitions and investments, including advising on contracts/service agreements, restrictive covenants and settlement agreements; drafting employment agreements and policies and ensuring compliance with all aspects of employment legislation; and advising businesses on a range of employee data protection issues, including managing complex data subject access requests.

Navi regularly writes and delivers training to clients on a range of employment law issues and is a regular speaker at Shoosmiths’ national employment seminars, and contributor to articles published by the firm.

Navi has been elected as the Milton Keynes Employee Representative and regularly advises and supervises on a pro bono basis through the Milton Keynes’s Citizens Advice Bureau and the Midlands Employment Law Clinic. Navi is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association.

Career

Navi trained at Mills & Reeve and qualified at Fieldfisher LLP in 2017. Navi joined Shoosmiths in December 2018 and was promoted to Senior Associate in September 2021.

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