We are experienced employment Lawyers based in Te Puke, and service the Bay of Plenty. We have an office in the Tauranga CBD.
As well as being a law firm with experienced Lawyers, the Director David Pawson has an operational Investigative background with the Royal New Zealand Military Police (Special Investigation Branch), NZ Customs service and 13 years experience as a Senior Prosecutor. There is not much David does not know about how an investigation should be done. He is known as a skilful, tenacious investigator and lawyer. David received a NZDF CGS commendation medal for investigative excellence. Both David and Ellie are held in high regard by the ERA, Employment Court and higher appellant jurisdiction and have a very high success rate.
We have experience in the transportation/horticultural industry and specialise in serious incident (fatal serious injury) or serious disciplinary cases.
Employers
When we are acting for an employer, we guard against risk exposure because we know what we are doing. We we have significant experience for both employee and employer.
- Employment relationship problems
- dispute resolution
- Personal Grievances
We will advise you on the best way to deal with an employment relationship issue. Unlike, ‘card carrying’ employment advocates/advisors/consultants, we are actual lawyers and we will see the matter through. Our lawyers are in court everyday and we have no hesitation proceeding to litigation if the situation demands it.
We advise you early to reduce your risk exposure because mis-handling employment investigations and disciplinary matters can be costly to business. We do advise clients that if you use ‘HR consultants’, to ensure that they have personal indemnity insurance because if they get it wrong, it is the employer who is liable.
We deal with serious misconduct allegations where the matter is highly likely to head to the Employment Relations Authority, Employment Court or appeal higher. We do not deal with performance management issues unless it is job threatening or high risk.
Employee
We provide representation for employees affected by restructuring including professional, mid-senior management to executive level.
For any investigation done by the employer will need to be done correctly, fairly and reasonably. We are intolerant of perfunctory ‘box ticking’ and pre-determined outcomes. We will be thorough and challenge competency of an investigation where it is tardy. We have a very high success rate in this area.
Representation during investigations. We specialise in serious allegations where there is a risk of dismissal or overlap with criminal charges.
We do make an assessment early in our engagement with clients in order to ascertain the prospect of success because we only run cases where there is a good prospect of success.
Private prosecutions
We do conduct private criminal prosecutions (prosecutions or Defence) including under section 47-49 (reckless conduct or failure of duties) and 144 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 where there is sufficient evidence and public interest to do so. We have successfully prosecuted organisations for a range of offences including where a fatal or serious incidents and where there was a disregard for risk to health and safety or where an employer has neglected their duty of care to keep an employee safe and the Worksafe wont proceed, we will if there is evidence.
Our fees are reasonable and competitive. We offer a ‘fixed fee’ model for most cases we work as opposed to hourly rate (we do not do 6 minute units!). See our terms and conditions . Pawson Law also accepts credit card payments if you need help fast.
We believe in good communication with our confirmed clients, so if you have agreed to an agreed ‘fixed fee’, we do not depart from that and do not charge you for phone calls, letters, and other correspondence within normal office hours. We only charge for this if you instruct us on an hourly rate.
Get in touch with our Te Puke and Tauranga employment lawyers today.