Sophie Vanhegan

Practice Areas

Sophie is acknowledged as a leading lawyer in the UK employment law arena and has extensive experience in both High Court employment litigation and strategic advisory work. Her practice encompasses all aspects of UK employment law, including injunctions, team moves, unfair dismissals, bonuses and discrimination. She has experience of outsourcings, TUPE, company restructures, redundancies and regulatory issues.

Sophie’s client achievements include:

- successfully advising the asset management division of a FTSE listed banking group in a complex redundancy situation where the potentially redundant employee had alleged race, disability and sex discrimination;

- advising a client on sensitive #MeToo allegations concerning a very senior employee and successfully negotiating their amicable exit from the company;

- advising a FinTech company on enforcing a non-compete restriction against a former senior employee who had joined a competitor;

- defending a financial services firm in a multi-million pound discrimination dispute with a former employee; and

- advising the asset management division of a FTSE listed banking group in defending allegations in pre-action correspondence of two unlawful team moves inducing a breach of restrictive covenants in relation to the client’s hiring of a number of key hires from two competitors, alongside putting in place complex long-term cash incentive plans for them to achieve key financial targets once restriction free.

Experienced in all aspects of employment law and specialising in complex employment litigation, Sophie regularly advises on restrictive covenant, breach of confidentiality and team move matters which involve High Court injunctions and subsequent trials, as well as bonus disputes and high-value discrimination claims. Many of the cases she works on have cross-jurisdictional elements. She has worked on some of the most complex employment litigation matters and specialises in tailoring a strategic approach to her clients’ risk and litigation appetite.

Career

Sophie worked at Linklaters until 2012 before joining GQ|Littler. At Linklaters Sophie undertook a five-month secondment to global investment bank RBS to assist with restructuring issues, following RBS's acquisition of ABN AMRO. Sophie was promoted to partner in 2015.

Professional Memberships

Employment Lawyers Association.