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Employment law brief: 9 January 2020

08 January 2020 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7869 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Ian Smith gets on his bike post-Christmas to deliver a welcome refresher course for employment geeks & those with a general interest
  • Is a courier a ‘worker’ and where are the limits of whistleblowing protection?
  • The legal status of a tribunal and how the non-technical approach to early conciliation can disadvantage the claimant, not just the respondent.

Given the result of the general election, it is now not urgent for employment lawyers to re-read the classic texts and dig out old law school notes to remind themselves what a trade union is and just what can be lawfully done in the course of industrial action. Instead, this first column of 2020 concentrates on two substantive issues of individual employment law (is a courier a ‘worker’ and where are the limits of whistleblowing protection?) and two procedural issues (the legal status of a tribunal and how the non-technical approach to early conciliation can disadvantage the claimant, not just the respondent).

Legal status of motorbike couriers

With the appeal

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University of Manchester: The LLM driving tech-focused career growth

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Switalskis—Sally Christey, Mathew Abiagom & Cyman Kaur

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NEWS
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The long-predicted death of the billable hour may finally be here—and this time, it’s armed with a scythe. In a sweeping critique of time-based billing, Ian McDougall, president of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, argues in this week's NLJ that artificial intelligence has made hourly charging ‘intellectually, commercially and ethically indefensible’
From fake authorities to rent reform, the civil courts have had a busy start to 2026. In his latest 'Civil way' column for NLJ this week, Stephen Gold surveys a procedural landscape where guidance, discretion and discipline are all under strain
Fact-finding hearings remain a fault line in private family law. Writing in NLJ this week, Victoria Rylatt and Robyn Laye of Anthony Gold Solicitors analyse recent appeals exposing the dangers of rushed or fragmented findings
As the Winter Olympics open in Milan and Cortina, legal disputes are once again being resolved almost as fast as the athletes compete. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Ian Blackshaw of Valloni Attorneys examines the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS's) ad hoc divisions, which can decide cases within 24 hours
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