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Our practices

Employment, labour and benefits

Prompt and proactive, our employment team offer commercial employment advice, underpinned by their extensive legal knowledge and expertise.

Our clients cross various business sectors, including banking and finance, recruitment, professional services, education, healthcare and media. This diversity gives us the advantage when assessing the needs of your business and providing employment advice and services.

We work closely with our clients to produce suitable documentation and to guide them through this ever more complex area of law. We offer both a contentious and non-contentious service.

Our non-contentious team can provide you with HR advice and bespoke suites of employment documentation such as staff handbooks, policies and procedures.

Our contentious team can advise on redundancies and transfers, both small-scale and collective, dealing with grievances and disciplinary issues as well as claims, obtaining injunctive relief for the misuse of confidential information and breaches of post-termination restrictions, and Court actions.

We assist local and foreign corporates with all aspects of labour and employment law concerns, such as day-to-day labour and immigration law issues, social security, hirings, terminations and layoffs, compensation arrangements, wages and stock option schemes, and negotiations with trade unions.

Our expertise extends to assisting our transactional counterparts with the labour aspects of M&A, joint ventures and corporate reorganisations. Our dispute resolution expertise ensures that we are regularly involved in contentious proceedings before national labour courts, labour appellate tribunals, and other forums.

The presence of specialist employment lawyers across our international network of offices ensures that we are well placed to advise on specific local issues, as well as coordinate cross-border advice and handle the labour aspects of multijurisdictional transactions.

At a glance
  • Askari Bank Limited: represented client in a grievance petition filed by one of the ex-employee of the company before National Industrial Relation Commission.
  • Clariant Group: represented client in the restructuring of its leather business in Pakistan, divided in to two stages. Our tasks including drafting of novation agreements for transfer of employees from (i) Archroma Pakistan Limited (formerly known as Clariant Pakistan Limited) to Clariant Chemical Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited, a company wholly owned by Clariant FZE and (ii) Clariant Chemical Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited to Stahl Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited. Stage (ii) is currently on going in Pakistan.
  • Halliburton Worldwide Limited: represented client in a civil suit filed by one of the ex-employee of the company before the Civil Court, Islamabad.
  • Halliburton Worldwide Limited: represented client in a grievance petition filed by one of the ex-employee of the company before National Industrial Relation Commission.
  • United Energy Pakistan Limited: represented client in its acquisition of nine oil and gas exploration blocks from BP Pakistan Exploration Inc, BP Pakistan (Badin) Inc and BP Exploration (Alpha) Limited (together “BP”). The transaction involved inter alia the transfer of employees from BP to UEPL and the transfer of Provident and Gratuity Funds from BP to UEPL, with all amounts accruing thereto.
  • YKK Pakistan (Private) Limited: represented client in respect of the termination of specific employees. Reviewed individual employment contracts and drafted termination agreements for those employees accepting the termination and termination notices for employees who refused to execute the termination agreement. Subsequently advised YKK in respect of proceedings initiated by the terminated employees before the Export Processing Zone Authority.
Practice areas
  • Consultancy agreements
  • Disciplinary and grievance
  • Discrimination and victimisation claims
  • Policies, procedures and handbooks
  • Post termination restrictions and garden leave
  • Settlement agreements
  • Unfair dismissal
  • Whistleblowing
  • Wrongful dismissal
  • Labour Courts and Appellate Tribunal matters

Contact one of our lead employment partners today: Yousaf Khosa, Shafaq Rehman or Adil Khalid Tirmizey.

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What clients say...

  • Chambers Asia Pacific 2022
    "RIAA are responsive, professional and polite in explaining their advice, well researched in their opinions, and reliable in their response time… they also share commercial and operational consequences of the options presented in their advice. We are very happy with their support…." - Chambers Asia Pacific 2022

  • The Legal 500 2022
    “RIAA has an excellent litigation practice that advises on the full range of contentious issues as well as international arbitrations. The practice regularly handles all forms of civil, commercial, corporate, regulatory and white-collar crime matters before all the courts in Pakistan. It has extensive experience in a diverse range of industry sectors …” – The Legal 500 2022

  • Chambers Asia Pacific 2022
    "We find them to be extremely professional and responsive. They are meticulous in raising all the right legal points but at the same time are very solution-oriented in helping to structure the transactions in the right way to fully protect our legal rights." – Chambers Asia Pacific 2022

  • The Legal 500 2022
    “The team has an excellent track record of working on some of the most significant projects in Pakistan throughout the years.” – The Legal 500 2022 

  • Legal 500 2021
    We have worked with RIAA Barker Gillette for many years on a number of matters, including regulatory issues, labor, general corporate, competition law, and tax matters…..We have found high-quality lawyers across disciplines, who are able to balance the requirement for technically sound advice while also being practical and solution-orientated - Legal 500 2021

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