Claire Knowles

Practice Areas

Claire is a senior partner and shareholder at Acuity Law, and a member of our Senior Leadership Team.

She joined Acuity to lead the Employment team and has since been the driving force of its growth. She provides commercially focused direction using the wealth of knowledge and experience she has built up over more than 15 years at top-tier national and international law firms.

Claire’s advice is both responsive and strategic. She focuses on achieving the best commercial outcome, which has enabled her to become a true business partner for several of Acuity’s key clients. She exploits her deep understanding of each client’s business to not only handle issues as they arise but pre-empt and mitigate risk by ensuring all internal people strategies are fully effective and optimised.

She works with board members and senior management teams to shape and develop their people initiatives and implement cultural change programmes. She is a member of Acuity’s ESG group, providing support on both social and governance initiatives, as well as board efficiency audits.

Claire has also been instrumental in creating new Acuity products, such as our IR35 tool, redundancy costs calculator and training programmes – all designed to support and augment our clients’ operations.

Her proven track record, combined with her personable and honest style, has allowed her to build an effective and long-term rapport with her clients. She is adept at both strengthening existing relationships and developing our client base, meaning a significant portion of her work is won through client referrals – testament to the high standard of work that she and her team deliver.

Claire’s reputation and expertise were recognised when she was awarded “Best Professional in Business” at the Welsh Women’s Awards 2022, an event showcasing female professionals and entrepreneurs across the region. She has also been acknowledged as a Leading Individual by both Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500. Claire’s standing in the market continues to grow and she is regularly asked to speak at large-scale events.

Assisting organisations across a wide range of disciplines in both the private and public sectors, including SMEs, PLCs, national and international clients, Claire handles both contentious and non-contentious employment issues. Her extensive contentious experience includes restrictive covenants and associated disputes, tribunal litigation and director and shareholder disputes. She also works closely with our Corporate team to provide strategic employment advice on the duties and obligations arising out of company acquisitions and mergers and restructures.

Additionally, Claire serves as Acuity Law’s Director of People, setting the strategy and developing our internal HR and Learning and Development function. This has involved developing our vacation scheme, training contract recruitment processes and various wellbeing initiatives.

Expertise:

• All aspects of employment law and people management

• Contract formulation and disputes

• The Equality Act 2010

• Employment tribunal litigation

• Restructures and reorganisations

• Restrictive covenants

• Strategic workforce planning

• TUPE transfers

• Employee benefit schemes and share option schemes

• Cultural change initiatives

• Board efficiency audits

• Board-level support to set people strategies