Paul Smith

Practice Areas

Paul Smith is specialist barrister who “has an excellent breadth of knowledge across the field of employment law”.

He is instructed by business and individual clients across the full range of employment matters and regularly appears against senior practitioners and KCs. His practice covers discrimination, whistleblowing and unfair dismissal cases through to complex disputes involving part-time working, equal pay and TUPE. He also advises and appears in the High Court in actions arising from restrictive covenants in contracts of employment, the misuse of confidential information by employees, and in respect of notice pay claims. He appears in Employment Tribunals across England and Wales (and their equivalent in Northern Ireland) and has a bulk of experience in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, including in the cases of Hershaw v Sheffield City Council [2014] IRLR 919, Eyres v Air Vane Compressors (2017) UKEAT/0347/16/DA, Mostyn v S&P Casuals (2018) UKEAT/0158/17/2202, and Adams v Birmingham City Council [2019] ICR 531. Paul has been recommended in the national legal directories every year since he qualified, in 2011.

Career

2008 Call (Gray’s Inn)

2015 Appointed Junior Counsel to the Crown by the Attorney General (Regional B Panel)

2019 Appointed to the Equality and Human Rights Commission panel of counsel

2020 Appointed as a fee-paid Employment Judge in England & Wales

2020 Appointed as a fee-paid Employment Judge in Scotland

Professional Memberships

Employment Lawyers’ Association

Industrial Law Society

Employment Law Bar Association