Nicola Whiteley

Partner

London

nwhiteley@orrick.com

Read full biography at www.orrick.com

Nicola is head of the London Employment Team and has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of contentious and non-contentious employment law, with a particular focus on complex and/or cross border issues for multinational clients and on the Technology and Finance sectors.

Leading a “straightforward and solutions-focused” team in London who are “exceptionally good and very highly respected globally”, Nicola is listed and noted for her “business-oriented approach” in Lexology Index and recognised by Chambers and Partners as “an excellent lawyer” who is “extremely responsive, commercially astute and pragmatic” and “an absolute pleasure to work with”, with clients praising her “solution orientated” nature, “very good sense of customer service” and her ability to “get to the heart of a legal problem very quickly” and “simplify complex legal matters into understandable chunks”.

Nicola is also recognised as a Leading Partner by Legal 500 UK. Clients describe her as "responsive, quick, pragmatic, and a joy to work with," making in-house counsel's life "a lot easier." Her calm and sensible advice has been invaluable in stressful employment disputes, earning her the reputation of an "outstanding employment law practitioner." Nicola's strong technical expertise, deep understanding of her clients' businesses, and commercial pragmatism make her a "pleasure to work with."

Furthermore, Nicola is lauded as "superb – clever, technical, accessible, commercial, and a thoroughly decent lawyer and human being," with tremendous respect from peers and clients alike. Her broad range of experience and cost-effective solutions are highly valued, as is her ability to provide expert legal advice and counsel tailored to the practical needs of businesses. Nicola is also trusted for independent investigation work and legal ethics-related advice.

She is a member of the International Committee of the Employment Lawyer's Association.

Posts by: Nicola Whiteley

Good Work If You Can Get It: UK Government’s Response to Modern Working Proposals

and Posted on

Some seven months after the publication of Matthew Taylor’s independent ‘Review of Modern Working Practices’, the UK Government has finally issued its response to the Taylor proposals: the “Good Work” response (the “Response”). Big news, you might think – but it’s fair to say that it promises more than it delivers.

Some of the headlines in the UK press would have you believe that there has been a large scale reform on UK employment rights and this was certainly the expectation– but this just isn’t the case, at least for now. The Government has stated that it is in agreement with 52 of the 53 recommendations from Matthew Taylor’s commissioned review, which considered how employment practices need to change in order to keep pace with modern business models (the “Taylor Review”), and it has acknowledged that, “all work should be fair and decent, with scope for development and fulfilment” – but the major points in the Response are all subject to further consultation and we are far from having concrete plans in place to effect change. READ MORE →

Orrick Establishes Automated GDPR Readiness Assessment Tool

, , , and Posted on

 

On September 6, 2017, Orrick announced the launch of its innovative online automated GDPR Readiness Assessment Tool. The tool helps organizations assess their state of readiness with the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that comes into effect on 25 May 2018. The tool segments the GDPR into 14 workable themes and takes users through a series of questions relating to each theme. READ MORE →

Brexit: What Does it Mean for Employers in the U.K.?

and Posted on

We set out below our best guess on where this leaves employees, management and HR in the UK.

Firstly as we have all heard repeatedly today, nothing is going to change immediately and that is the same for employment law.  It will be years before any changes are made and for the time being, everything remains the same and critically, no one has to leave.

Much of our employment law is just that – employment law driven solely by the UK.  We then have laws that have been enacted into UK law as a result of European directives – so those laws are the ones that may, at some point in the future, be targeted.  Our guess at Orrick is that changes where they happen will be focused on consultation rights, holiday pay and working time.  Worker involvement has never had the same traction in the UK that it has with our European counterparts and the UK has always viewed employee consultation with a degree of skepticism.  For this reason, we think it may eventually be a focus for change.

READ MORE →

Cross-Border Trends: Mind the Gap

Posted on

In the heady days of the Coalition Government, gender pay gap reporting started to get some traction on the political agenda. This led to the 2011 initiative ‘Think, Act, Report’ which encouraged employers to voluntarily publish gender pay gap information. According to a Guardian article in August 2014, citing a parliamentary question from the shadow Equalities Minster at the time, 200 companies signed up to the initiative but only four of those ever published any data. £90,000 of public money later and we were clearly no further on.

READ MORE →

Cross-Border Trends: UK to Follow US Attack on the Gender Pay Gap

, and Posted on

Following months of waiting the UK Government has finally published its draft regulations on the new “gender pay gap reporting” requirements in the UK. On publication of the draft regulations, the UK Government has asked one final consultation question: “What, if any, modifications should be made to these draft regulations?” – And so it would appear that the draft regulations are nearing but possibly not quite in final form, pending any pertinent responses received.

READ MORE →

On My Whistle: Are You Up to Speed in the UK with the Financial Conduct Authority’s New Rules on whistleblowing?

Posted on

Relevant firms in the UK have until March 7, 2016 to appoint a “whistleblowers’ champion,” who then has until September 7, 2016 to oversee their firm’s readiness for the new whistleblowing regime.

The new whistleblowing regime: why make the change?

Since the 2013 Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards recommendations were published in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) has been examining ways to ensure that individuals working in financial services feel able and encouraged to speak up when they have concerns to avoid the same financial scandals of the past.

READ MORE →

International data transfer news… a bit like buses

and Posted on

You know how you wait for ages for a bus to come (well, we do in Europe) and then three come along at once? Well it’s a little like that in the data privacy arena right now, as far as transfer of international personal data is concerned, anyhow. For years, there has been a reasonably steady and fairly consistent position from the various bodies responsible for this complicated and often confusing area of law, but in the last few weeks we have been hit with a significant change overnight and we are all left wondering where to get off.

READ MORE →

Where to Draw the Line: HR’s Role in Disciplinary Decisions

Posted on

Road Signs

In the recent case of Ramphal v. Department of Transport (DoT) the tricky question of where HR should draw the line in a disciplinary matter between guiding the decision-maker on the right decision, and making that decision for them, was considered. The results weren’t great for the HR manager involved in this case…

READ MORE →

Say What You Will About Employment Law in the UK but It Is Never Boring

Posted on

Imagine that you have a senior employee who you have decided (for whatever reason) that you do not want anymore but you do not want to pay out his 12-month notice period.  As an ingenious attempt to get around that, you instruct forensic investigators to carry out a ‘fishing expedition’ to try and find some dirt on him that will justify you summarily dismissing him, rather than paying out what he is owed under his contract.  Imagine that your luck is in and you do indeed find some dirt but that the dirt you find is five year old dirt.  Would you think that the High Court is going to accept this approach and agree that you don’t have to pay the notice period?

READ MORE →