1. Assess the strength of your case

Your employer is more likely to negotiate a settlement if you have a strong case, because of the risk of being taken to and losing the case in the Employment Tribunal. If you are thinking of starting a case, try our ‘Do I have a case‘ app to assess the strength of your case.

2. Decide on your negotiating strategy

If you believe you have a reasonably strong case, you should decide on your strategy for negotiating. Read these two articles to help you:

• Negotiating
• Evidence

Generally, we recommend that your best negotiating strategy will be to write a letter to your employer, setting out your case.

Normally, a strong letter will get a reply from your employer setting out their side of the story.

Their response letter will expose their counter-arguments and will help you understand the extra evidence that you will need to obtain to negotiate a good settlement.

3. Write a without prejudice letter

Without prejudice means off the record, so if you get it wrong, it can’t be used against you later on.  This means it could not be used against you in an investigation at work or referred to by a judge in any Employment Tribunal should you decide to start a claim.

Our website provides some free letter builder tools which, depending on your case, will write the structure out for you, so you just have to fill in a few personal details:

• Redundancy
• Coronavirus health & safety
• Performance unfair dismissal
• Unlawful deduction of wages

We also have a selection of without prejudice letters here:

• Examples of without prejudice letters

You can also read about writing a good without prejudice letter in our advice articles here:

• How and when to use without prejudice letters
• 10 tips on writing without prejudice letters

4. Assess your employer’s response

There are 3 types of responses that we usually see from employers:

Complete denial

This usually includes writing back to you to say that you have no hope and that they will not negotiate with you. In these circumstances, it’s time to escalate matters.

Partial denial

This includes a letter similar to complete denial, but will leave a glimmer of hope. The glimmer of hope could be asking for more information in writing or inviting you to a meeting. At this point, you should respond to their specific queries as often negotiations are hampered by misunderstandings in the facts, which can be easily resolved by email. Our do I have a case tool provides a reading list for this process.

No reply

Employers often won’t respond at all, or will acknowledge receipt of your letter without actually responding. This can be frustrating but you need to chase them. If you’ve chased them and there is still no response, then it’s time to escalate matters.

5. Escalate matters internally

You can submit a formal written grievance if you’re still employer. In doing so, you should follow your employer’s written procedure. Examples of grievance letters can be found here.

A grievance can use the same structure as was used in your without prejudice letter, but taking out any mention of settlements or tribunals. Essentially, it’s a statement of facts regarding your circumstances and what happened.

Writing a grievance tells your employer that you won’t give up, which is just another reason for them to offer a settlement.

Another way of encouraging your employer to offer a settlement is to raise a subject access request, which can be read about here. You can also see our example DSAR’s here.

A DSAR is a request for all the information that your employer has about you, including internal emails which may be discussing you.

6. Escalate matters externally

It is crucial that you obtain a certificate from ‘ACAS’ before the 3 month time limit has expired. Doing so is discussed on our page here and you can read about 3 month time limits here.

An ACAS certificate will give you a month to issue en Employment Tribunal claim, doing so is explained here and you can see our example Employment Tribunal claim documents here.

7. Settlement agreement offers

If at any stage your employer offers you a settlement, play it cool and don’t just accept the first offer they make. Read our article on how much you should get here, and read the guidance on our calculator page here.

There is always an amount of money for legal fees set out in the settlement agreement document itself, so don’t hesitate to call a lawyer to support negotiations at this point. This is usually for the legal costs of going through this lengthy document with you and will not result in any additional cost to you as it will be invoiced directly to your employer.

Your solicitor will then go through this document in detail with you to discuss whether you should try to negotiate an increased amount. We at Monaco Solicitors can offer a no win no fee basis for this.

Once you are happy with the settlement amount, we would countersign the document to confirm that all of the legal wording in the document has been explained to you in plain English and that you have understood.

If you have a law firm and then, of course, your website requires a search engine optimization for desired results. However, screen-based optimization plays an important role but your website needs to be well prepared for everything. You might be thinking about how to do voice search SEO? Well, do not worry!

Let’s acknowledge the strategies and optimization tips for law firms to do voice search SEO.

Work on long-tail keyphrases

• With voice searches, you must optimize for the long-tail keyphrase. You can utilize phrases that have more than 3 words, maybe 4. Long-tail phrases are generally complex and crisp about answering precise questions of people about a particular subject or item.
• Long-tail keyphrases are comparatively less competitive as not every individual might have an article on every niche. You may take the help of different tools that are available to help you with keyphrase ideation.

Utilize question words in long-tail key phrases

• The best you can do is use questions words in long-tail key phrases such as who, what, where, why, how. As people are more likely to search queries in question form.
• Another reason to converge on question keywords is generally people are not searching for law hiring and maybe willing to get some information about a particular niche.

Create quality and relevant content

• Google has its own algorithm and works on the same SEO tactics to push quality and relevant content. Google algorithm focuses on factors such as your location data, your search history, and past searches on the same term having multiple meanings and searches that may take place.
• And with the following term, you should create content that has deeper dig to all the aspects as Google will focus on more valuable content and relevant for the user.

Use natural and conversational voice

• Well, connecting to people becomes easy when they hear a natural and conversational voice. Users are familiar with the voice like Siri and Alexa, as they connect to it easily rather than thinking it to be like any robotic voice.
• Searchers do not talk like a lawyer and you should not do the same. Under a very rare case, a legalese voice should be utilized.
• While creating the content you must focus on pain points, goals, aims, and hopes of the clients. You must not sound like a cliche legal sales copy and rather be more interactive and connecting.

Try going local

• Local SEO is always good for optimization efforts. Google is set to personalize the information as per the location of the searcher. You may note that without any setting also you may be able to get information based on your nearby location.
• You can do local SEO by NAP- name, address, and phone as it becomes easier with the following information by locating on your site and making sure that it is consistent everywhere.

Create an interactive website

• Try making your site responsive and interactive which means your website should be mobile friendly as well as system friendly. This is not only cost-saving but enhances user experiences.
• Take the initiative of an FAQ strategy, people who are seeking the solution for legal problems like queries about legal terms, hiring the lawyer, and many more uncertainties that may be expressed in the form of questions.

Conclusion

Voice search SEO is gaining much popularity day by day with the interest of people. Voice search optimization is an ongoing process as it is a fast-changing process. Voice search SEO should be done along with other website marketing methods. Though it is a time-consuming process you can opt for the services from the valuable SEO agencies. I wish you all the luck that prevails!