Department: employment
Location: manchester
Admission Date: 1981

Areas of Practice: leisure and retail; large-scale discrimination cases involving harassment; equal pay claims; job evaluations; advocacy

Michael concentrates almost exclusively on work for respondents. He acts for larger corporate clients primarily in the retail and leisure industry most of which are multi site operators throughout the UK. He works for a number of national retail chains including large companies in the clothing, pharmacy, off licence, managed on licence and travel sectors. He also works for a number of government departments.

His personal area of expertise is advocacy with over 20 year's experience of contentious cases of all types before the Employment Tribunal and elsewhere.

Given his client base his work often involves the TUPE aspects of business sales and service provision changes together with large scale restructuring programmes requiring both strategic and operational advice. Public to private sector initiatives have become an increasing part of his work and also the need to re-engineer businesses to reflect technological advances.

Michael has been extensively involved in the practical development of the Firm's interactive portal for the provision of real time management information to employment clients. He enjoys his role in interactive training. He has a particular interest in e-learning and web based training and developed the Department's on line diversity training programme called "e=quality".

Michael makes regular contributions to the media in all forms including the trade and national press. He is a regular speaker for the CIPD and has addressed The Lawyer's Conference. He is a regular contributor to the Firm's annual Hotels Conference.

He is a member of the Employment Lawyers' Association and is their representative on the Regional Employment Tribunal Users Committee. He chaired the regional ELA working party during the consultation on worker status.

Outside work he is normally watching Everton or getting on a plane to go back to Italy. He has a keen interest in contemporary theatre and is on the Board at Contact Theatre in Manchester