Melanie is an associate solicitor in the employment team, who acts for businesses and individuals. She is an experienced advocate having undertaken over 130 hearings including eight final hearings at the employment tribunal.

Melanie uses this expertise when she advises clients on both contentious and non-contentious matters, including unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing and day to day HR enquiries such as grievances, disciplinary hearings and redundancies amongst other queries. She has substantial experience drafting policies, contracts and settlement agreements and has negotiated the resolution of a wide range of disputes.

Melanie also advises individuals and businesses on a range of privacy and data protection matters, including audits to ensure compliance, data protection policies and procedures (including DSARs and data breaches) and enquiries relating to the UK data protection legislation. She has recently advised a client on implementing an international data transfer agreement (IDTA) with consideration of a transfer risk assessment.

Her recent experiences include: implementing a European-wide strategy to prepare businesses for ongoing data protection compliance, advising on the everchanging Covid-19 legislation and successfully defending a claim for unfair dismissal from initial instruction to advocacy at the four-day final hearing.

Prior to joining Clarkslegal, Melanie trained and worked in-house at G4S, the world’s largest security company, for over 7 years. She managed employment issues for around 35,000 staff.

Working in-house has enabled Melanie to develop commercial acumen, sector knowledge and formulate practical and innovative solutions to clients’ legal queries.