Sought £8k under bonus scheme
A London law firm has successfully overturned a ruling that it pay a newly qualified solicitor almost £8,000 in commission.
The London Central Employment Tribunal had originally sided with Billy Rashbrook, who qualified at Raymond Saul & Co in September 2021 on a £38,000 salary, finding in March 2023 that he was entitled to £7,866 under a bonus scheme.
But Andrew Burns KC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, held that the tribunal had not interpreted the key clause in Rashbrook’s contract using its “natural and ordinary meaning”.
Rashbrook’s contract provided that, if he billed more than three times his salary (£114,000) in the year to 31 August and the money was paid by clients, he would receive commission of 20% of the excess.
On appeal, the firm argued that the calculation had to be based on work Rashbrook had actually carried out, not simply on bills in his name. Burns agreed, holding that the 20% clause applied only if three conditions were met: the amounts had to be invoiced by Rashbrook, subsequently paid by clients, and, crucially, relate to work he had carried out.
“The contract should be construed so that the claimant only earns commission from the profit costs exceeding the threshold which were in respect of his work and not the work of any of his colleagues, including partners, fee earners and trainee solicitors,” Burns said.
The judge went on: “It was perverse for the ET to say that it had no evidence of the respondent keeping the necessary records when it was undisputed evidence before the ET that the respondent had a time recording system.”
Given that Rashbrook was in his first year of practice, Burns added that it was “fanciful to think that the claimant would be able to satisfy any reasonable ET that he did sufficient work during the Commission Year in order to cross the commission threshold”.
“When the supervision and contribution of partners, other fee-earners and trainees are taken into account… there is no reasonable prospect of him showing that he did the vast majority of the work on all of these other files in the very first year of his practice,” the judge concluded.
The claim was dismissed.
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