Employment and Partnership Litigation Specialist Ivor Adair Joins from the Highly-Regarded Employment Team at Slater & Gordon

Appointment builds on firm’s growth with expansion of its top-flight dispute resolution service

The specialist partnership and employment law firm Fox & Partners has appointed a new partner, Ivor Adair. The appointment is part of the firm’s continuing growth strategy and the first at partner level since three long-standing colleagues of Ronnie Fox became partners in Fox & Partners in 2017.

Ivor Adair will join Fox & Partners in early December from Slater & Gordon. He has considerable experience of dealing with litigation in both High Court disputes and significant employment tribunal matters, as well as experience in many other aspects of employment law. He has advised on sensitive partner and employee exits from professional services firms and in the financial services sector. He has also advised senior executives, medical professionals, professional performers and sports professionals, acting for a number of high-profile football managers. In addition, he has considerable experience in advising on professional regulatory matters, data protection rights and workplace privacy issues.

Commenting on the appointment, partner Caroline Field says: “We are really delighted that Ivor is joining us — he has exactly the mix of partnership and employment expertise that Fox & Partners is known for, as well as first-class experience of complex litigation. Ivor’s appointment, together with our recruitment of a newly-qualified solicitor and paralegal earlier in the year, ensures that as we grow our clients can continue to expect responsive, high-quality support. This expansion evidences our commitment to dispute resolution from a team that is equipped to fight all the way if necessary.”

Partner Catriona Watt added, “We have been keen to find another partner who would be the right fit to support our growth, and our positioning as a leading firm for senior level employment and partnership dispute resolution. Ivor fits the bill extremely well and we are looking forward to introducing him to our clients.”

During Ivor’s career he has represented claimants in large and complex whistle-blowing, discrimination, work stress and TUPE claims. He has also handled incentive and contractual disputes, restrictive covenant matters, acted in professional negligence claims against firms of solicitors in relation to their employment law advice, and advised in arbitration proceedings. Ivor is a qualified Solicitor-Advocate with Higher Rights of Audience (civil).

He is highly-rated by the leading legal directories: The Legal 500 describes him as “very talented”, “highly rated” and “recommended”, while Chambers and Partners says Ivor Adair is “incredibly strategic and very bright, and he has very good attention to detail.”

He has dealt with a number of very high-value and sensitive cases, some of which have set national precedents. For example, Ivor acted for the group of musicians who, in a ground-breaking claim, sought an injunction to require the National Theatre to engage them to play their instruments in the production of War Horse, when they were dismissed: Ashworth & Ors v The Royal National Theatre [2014] EWHC 1176. The case had significant legal implications and received considerable national coverage in the press.

Ivor Adair says: “I have long admired Fox & Partners for their expertise, judgment and profile as one of the leading City partnership and employment firms, so I’m very excited to be joining the partnership team to help drive the firm’s future growth.”