Meet the team

Paman is a vastly experienced Solicitor Advocate who specialises in Employment Law, having been granted extended rights of audience to appear on behalf of clients in all tribunals and higher courts. He has been recognised by the Law Society of Scotland as an accredited specialist in Employment Law and Discrimination Law and is a leader in his field.

Paman has a breadth of knowledge and experience across all aspects of Employment Law. You’ll typically find him in his element when representing clients in the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Paman routinely appears in Tribunals around the UK, dealing with a variety of different issues, including unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing, TUPE and redundancy for clients in all sectors.

Whilst Paman has trained and focussed on Employment litigation, it is important to him to maintain a core portfolio of clients who he works with on day-to-day matters on issues such as disciplinaries, grievances, transfers, collective consultation and reorganisations, as well as larger strategic matters.

He is also comfortable in dealing with matters prior to them escalating into Tribunal claims, evidenced by his accreditation in Mediation. As a mediator, Paman has dealt with a variety of workplace disputes and is available to explore conflict resolution through this avenue.

The key to Paman’s way of working is to that he gives practical and commercial advice, untangled from legal jargon. As he sees it, if something can be explained in plain English, the Latin can be left to the lawyers in litigation. Paman’s approach is to get to know a client, their sector, their business, their culture and their way of working to allow him to provide a bespoke service. With his own background as a business owner, Paman prizes pragmatism.

Without wanting to slip into the cliché of lawyers selling themselves relentlessly on their bios, he does want to highlight that he has been awarded the most prestigious legal award in the industry…Most Stylish Male Solicitor of the Year and assures us that he gave a suitably Oscar -worthy acceptance speech.

Away from day-to-day work, Paman sits as a member of the Employment Law committee for the Law Society of Scotland and is a Tutor in Employment Law at the University of Strathclyde, mentoring future lawyers. As well as this, because he is not busy enough, he sits on the Employment Lawyers’ Association’s Race and Equality Committee.

If you’ve managed to get this far then as a reward, Paman is happy to share that in his free time, he enjoys playing badminton competitively, and is still doggedly refusing to give up on any remaining thimbleful of talent as a footballer. As of this year, despite all evidence to the contrary, Paman also became a ‘gym bro’, the office is full of protein powders and snacks as a result these days!

Ingrid is very much a trusted and go-to legal advisor. She is a key member of the employment, pensions and immigration team at Weightmans, providing both employment law and business immigration law support and advice to clients.

Ingrid is pragmatic, personable and solutions-focused. She has significant experience in the legal profession and truly focusses on what her clients' needs and objectives are. She is also very driven in building long standing relationships with clients and continues to work across many sectors.

Employment

Ingrid covers all areas of non-contentious employment matters and has particular experience in redundancies, restructuring/reorganisation, senior executive/management disputes and employment/TUPE support to corporate and real estate transactions. She has significant sector experience within retail and hospitality, construction, transport and logistics and owner managed business/SMEs.

She conducts her own advocacy and manages tribunal claims ranging from areas of unfair dismissal, protected disclosures, disability discrimination, redundancy and re-organisations, sex discrimination, TUPE and wasted costs.

Ingrid is also a key member of Weightmans' HR Rely team – offering price certainty and employment law solutions for our clients.

Ingrid also has previous experience in legal sales and growth strategy, training and supervision of employment colleagues and the development of cross-selling opportunities

Business immigration

Ingrid is experienced in both employment law and immigration law, allowing for seamless advice across both disciplines.

Her immigration expertise extends to assisting with compliance, policy drafting and implementation and strategy and the prevention of illegal working. She also has experience in providing global immigration advice and support to a variety of sectors including retail, transport, hospitality, education and construction.

Recent business immigration work highlights

• Advising higher education authority in respect of new points based system and assisting with policy implementation and strategy
• Advising FTSE 100 company in respect of compliance duties and immigration/discrimination considerations within recruitment practices
• Advising construction sector in respect of immigration rules and compliance
• Supporting transport and logistical businesses with compliance and advising in respect of immigration rules and the prevention of illegal working
• Advising further education authority in respect of sponsorship duties and application process

Memberships

• Employment Lawyers Association (ELA)
• Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA).

Andrew is a Fellow of the CIPD and has a masters’ degree in Human resource management and industrial relations. His experience covers both the public and private sectors and includes: Tribunal advocacy, consulting and negotiating with trade unions, training, mediation, seminar presentations and advising on employment law. Andrew joined Weightmans in October 2010 from EEF (now Make UK) where he was the HR and legal leader for the Midlands.

Susan joined Weightmans in 2015 from a Chartered University where she was Director of Legal and Secretariat (2008 – 2015). As the manager of an in-house legal, student complaints, academic appeals and breaches and information governance teams, Susan was directly responsible for managing and advising on strategic legal, regulatory and compliance risk.

Susan currently works with Higher Education institutions to provide legal advice and pragmatic support to University clients on student and staff related legal matters.

Susan’s credentials in HE legal practice include:

• A track record in building collegiate relationships with University central services and in working directly with academic colleagues on legal issues;
• Wide experience of delivering collaborative projects on a range of University issues.
• Practical and proportionate adviser on solutions and approaches to legal issues that impact on HE services, organisational performance, external contractual relationships, research projects and University partnerships that have led to or may lead to legal dispute.
• Developing innovative proposals to support University colleagues to address legal challenges: e.g. legal processes for in-house teams; legal risk assessment; template documents, legal process review, developing and delivering bespoke training.
• Susan specialises in supporting HE managers on the implementation of solutions in response to legal issues and acting as an addition to the HEI’s team.
• Susan is the third member of the Weightmans HE team to be recruited from an in-house position.

Jawaid is the head of HR Rely, Regional Office Head and an employment Partner. He has spent several years in industry and understands the need for commercial advice.

Jawaid specialises in equal pay and advising on major restructuring projects and claims made against Embassies.

Jawaid is totally focussed on ensuring our HR Rely clients are always delighted with the service they receive and is ultimately responsible for ensuring that they are. He is always happy to be contacted directly by clients with any feedback and you can rest assured that he will deal with any issues promptly.

Adele has extensive quality experience advising, training and representing SME and Corporate business’ on employee relations and all ancillary employment law issues.

Her expertise and insight allied to her friendly manner fosters a very good rapport with clients so she quickly grasps their business requirements, values and culture. She focuses on the key issues. She forensically breaks cases down delivering clear and pragmatic solutions tailored to the needs of your business. She acts for a host of loyal manufacturing and retail brands, blue chip companies and SMEs.

Her considerable expertise in the manufacturing and retail sectors, includes assisting them with complex change management programmes, advising, supporting and coaching teams of HR Managers in significant restructures with reputational implications for their business whilst enhancing their brand.

Adele is an experienced and persuasive advocate in the Employment Tribunal. She has many successful experiences of judicial and private mediation. Adele regularly leads on bespoke training courses delivered in-company where she is an engaging presenter.

Highlights include:

• Successfully advising, proactively supporting and coaching a team of HR Managers in harmonising and changing terms and conditions of employment of 10,000 employees. The international brand increased weekend working to 3 in 4 weekends. Removal of bonus payments and introduction of living wage foundation pay resulting in increased staff at business critical times and reducing the overall wage bill;
• Advising and supporting and coaching HR in significant restructure to cut 7500 jobs worldwide and 350 jobs in UK with reputational implications for the international brand resulting in a reduction in wage bill;
• Successfully managing capability termination of long-standing employee with significant mental health illness and numerous suicide attempts, preventing future grievances and significant liability for disability discrimination;
• Successfully settling multiple lurid allegations of sex discrimination which had the ability to adversely affect the reputation of a national business and saving approx. £85K in damages;
• Successfully advising and defending unfair dismissal and sex discrimination claims involving a longstanding employee with significant final salary pension loss saving £100k in damages.

Seema is an accomplished HR professional with a career spanning over two decades and is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development.

She specialises in employee relations and employment law and has supported organisations in an array of sectors through large scale restructures, mergers and acquisitions, as well as creating efficiencies within their day-to-day HR operations and compliance processes.

Seema first came across Weightmans when she worked in the employment team at Whitbread, and has also worked for lots of other big names, such as EE (telecoms), where she initially joined Orange and supported the organisation through the joint venture between France and Deutsche Telecom, and has even worked for a Subsidiary of Boeing. 

Seema ran her own HR consultancy for five years, doing high level investigation work for large corporates and public organisations, including various NHS and higher education clients. When she moved back in-house she worked for the BBC, where most notably she set up a team to manage the influx of Equal Pay claims. She went on to support the Group Finance director for the BBC as a business partner, as well as undertaking high risk disciplinary and grievance casework for BBC World News. Just as the pandemic started, she moved to a globally renowned business school as Associate Director of People Operations, helping them navigate the complex HR issues that the pandemic created, including the move to remote and hybrid working, and leading a team to modernise their HR operations. Once again, Seema was a Weightmans client, as she took on the HR Rely service to support the organisation, initially with a restructure programme and then with a manager advice line, which Seema was the main client contact and was operationally responsible for rolling out to the business.

​​​​​​​Seema has joined Weightmans as New Business Development Lead, with the aim of growing the HR Rely service, using her first-hand client insight of the product. Please get in touch with Seema to find out how she can support you.