Joanne Duck

Expertise

Joanne is a specialist employment lawyer who has practised employment law since 2013 advising on a broad range of matters ranging from non-contentious HR support, to project advisory work and employment litigation in the Employment Tribunal.

Joanne operates across a broad spectrum of industries and sectors including manufacturing, construction, education and logistics and has a rounded practice and knowledge base that enables her to assist employer clients of all sizes on a wide range of employment law/ HR matters. 

Joanne has a Respondent bias and particularly enjoys working with HR Directors and members of an employer’s senior management team to optimise employee performance and to proactively assist clients to achieve their HR objectives and people strategies. 

Joanne is frequently asked to deliver in-house training to clients in relation to HR and employment law matters.

Joanne also provides transactional support to the corporate and commercial teams, which often involves advising on the TUPE regulations. 

Key areas of Joanne’s practice include:

• strategic and operational advice in relation to change management (including reorganisation, redundancy and TUPE);
• disciplinary, grievance and performance management issues;
• discrimination advice, with a particular focus on disability discrimination;
• HR and employment law training;
• Settlement Agreements and key employee exits;
• Employment Tribunal litigation; and
• contracts, handbooks and policy drafting.

Experience

1. Advising a further education group in respect of the restructure of its whole group structure, incorporating over 1,000 roles. This encompassed managing a collective consultation process with various Trade Unions and no successful Employment Tribunal claims.
2. Successfully advising and representing a technology company in the Employment Tribunal to achieve the strike out of an unfair dismissal and disability discrimination claim brought by an ex-employee.
3. Providing transactional legal due-diligence support to an investor in relation to the acquisition of a target company for a value in excess of £60m. 
4. Advising senior executives and potential new employers on the enforceability of post-termination restrictions.
5. Advising a national lingerie company on the validity of mass workforce furlough calculations covering a potential underclaim for £400,000.