{{insights.date}}
{{insights.type}}
{{insights.contentTypeTag}}
Matthew Lewis
Partner
Matthew Lewis is the head of our employment practice based in our Leeds office.
Matthew trained and qualified as a trade union lawyer and has the unusual experience of both claimant and respondent work.
Matthew is experienced in all areas of employment law and regularly advises named clients. His work includes complex claims and grievances raised by employees, collective consultation (TUPE and redundancies) and union issues (including pay negotiations and strike action). Matthew has a real depth of experience and appreciates the commercial reality in which businesses operate.
Matthew regularly advises at the highest level, dealing with senior hires and fires and structural workplace changes.
Matthew has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme and Radio 5’s “Wake up to Money”. He regularly conducts webinars and seminars on a range of employment issues and enjoys delivering training to boards, management and HR teams.
Matthew is head of the firm’s Retail Industry Group and co-ordinates our retail offering on a global basis. This includes running our annual Retail Debate and Multichannel survey of retailers and shoppers. Matthew was one of the founding directors of the retail-focused credit union, RetailCURe, which was supported by the Retail Trust and major retailers.
- Advising on industrial action and strike action to minimise disruption and the question of using agency staff to cover striking workers.
- Steering collective redundancy processes on the closure/relocation of business and large scale restructurings.
- Dealing with allegations of soliciting staff, breach of confidentiality by ex-employees and obtaining appropriate safeguards and resolution.
- Project managing a pan-European integration exercise across six different jurisdictions.
- Advising in the context of TUPE whether union recognition transfers and the desire not to recognise the existing union, as well as other complex TUPE issues.
- Advising on agile and hybrid working scenarios as employers look at different working patterns following COVID-19.
Education
- London Guildhall University, L.P.C., 1994
- University of Birmingham, LL.B., 1987
Admissions
- England and Wales, 1997
Languages
- English
- Recommended in The Legal 500 UK for Employment: “Matthew Lewis takes time to understand the business, listens to the issues and supports to make sometimes tough decisions.”