Paul Statham
Co-Head of Employment
Paul Statham is a partner with Pattinson & Brewer Solicitors where he co-heads the Employment Law Department. Paul has over 25 years' experience dealing with all aspects of employment, discrimination law as well as the law relating to trade unions and their members.
He has always been committed to working for the rights of individual employees. In addition to advising the firm's trade union clients and their members, he also acts on behalf of private clients such as senior executives & directors, small businesses and not-for-profit organisations.
He is a member of the Executive of both the Industrial Law Society and Institute of Employment Rights and sits on the Legislative and Policy Committee of the Employment Lawyers Association (ELA). He lectures on employment law issues on a regular basis to both clients and outside bodies as well as writing regularly for the ELA Briefing and other publications.
Paul has been actively involved in many of the leading Employment law cases in the past twenty-five years, including:
- The longest ever Employment Tribunal case (Payne & Ors v. PLA)
- The major case relating to trade union discrimination on recruitment (Fitzpatrick v. BRB)
- The House of Lords case on personal contracts and action short of dismissal (Palmer v. ABP)
- The European Court case on the Working Time Directive (Bowden v. Tuffnells Express)
- The European Court of Human Rights case on trade union discrimination, (Wilson and Palmer v. the UK Government)
- Leading cases on the right to strike such as Connex v. RMT and LUL v. RMT and Royal Mail v. CWU.
Paul joined P&B in 1983 after 2 years research working on a thesis on "The Historical Development of Individual Employment Rights" at University of Warwick.
Paul recently co-authored "Employment Law Practice: Strategies for Success", a book which was published by IDS in September 2009.
He is married and his outside interests include tennis, cycling, roller-blading and Chelsea FC. He is also a keen underwater photographer & has dived in many obscure destinations in search of the prize-winning subjects but they keep swimming away.
