Many business owners start companies with friends, family members or long-time colleagues. While those relationships may provide a strong foundation, they offer little protection when disagreements arise, responsibilities become unequal or the business comes under financial pressure. We regularly advise business owners whose working relationships have broken down, often because important legal and financial safeguards were never put in place.
The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act) creates a risk-based framework for the development, supply and use of artificial intelligence. Although it is an EU law, it may apply to UK businesses that develop or supply AI systems to EU customers, place AI systems on the EU market, or provide AI-powered services whose outputs are used in the EU. This article explains the EU AI Act’s rules on prohibited AI practices, transparency obligations, high-risk AI systems and copyright-related requirements for certain AI models, before considering the UK’s current regulatory approach and the practical implications for data protection, automated decision-making, consumer protection and commercial contracts.
Supreme Court Clarifies the Scope of Contractual Compensation Clauses: Implications for Commercial Contracts
The UK Supreme Court’s decision in Great Asia Maritime Ltd v Orion Shipping and Trading LLC [2026] UKSC 23 provides important guidance on the relationship between contractual remedies and common law rights. Although the dispute arose from a ship sale agreement, the judgment has wider significance for businesses entering into commercial contracts across all sectors.
The Equality Act 2010 is the primary legislative framework covering discrimination in employment. In terms of the protected characteristic of sex, several different forms of discrimination are recognised. One of these is indirect discrimination. If an employer operates a provision, criterion, or practice (PCP) which places those of a certain sex at a particular disadvantage when compared with others, this will be discriminatory unless the employer can justify the PCP as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
The law on religion and belief discrimination protects employees not only from less favourable treatment because of a protected belief itself, but also because of the manifestation of that belief. However, not every opinion expressed by an employee will qualify as a manifestation of a protected belief.
A recent Employment Appeal Tribunal decision serves as a useful reminder that even discretionary bonus arrangements can create enforceable contractual rights once discretion has been exercised.
The Government has published its response to consultation on electronic and workplace balloting for statutory trade union ballots, alongside a draft Code of Practice, setting out how workplace ballots could operate in practice.
The government has launched a consultation on strengthening employment rights for unpaid carers and parents of seriously ill children, signalling that carers’ rights may remain firmly on the employment law agenda in the years ahead.
Most HR professionals will be familiar with unfair dismissal claims, but wrongful dismissal is a different type of claim altogether. Whereas unfair dismissal focuses on the fairness of the employer’s decision to dismiss, wrongful dismissal is a contractual claim that looks at whether the employer was entitled to terminate employment without notice.
A recent Employment Appeal Tribunal decision provides a useful reminder that employers cannot always rely on the absence of a formal occupational health opinion when assessing whether an employee is disabled under the Equality Act 2010.
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