About
Chantelle is a partner in our People & Reward team focusing on advising employers on a full range of employment law matters, across contentious, transactional and advisory spaces.
Chantelle’s practice involves helping employers navigate tricky situations and crisis management scenarios. Chantelle has extensive experience of advising clients on contentious and investigatory matters across a range of highly sensitive topics – from discrimination and whistleblowing to allegations of bullying and harassment. She also advises clients on the governance and HR steps that might follow an investigation process, and has been instructed to ‘stress test’ investigations prepared by other firms and advisors.
She has assisted employers in their defence of unfair dismissal, whistleblowing and discrimination claims in the Employment Tribunal and Employment Appeal Tribunal and restrictive covenant and breach of contract claims in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
Chantelle also regularly advises on executive appointments and terminations and on employer interactions with employee representative bodies, including in respect of extensive change programmes.
Chantelle advises on complex cross-border corporate transactions, covering both employment and incentives matters, with a particular interest in the acquisition of founder-led businesses.
Chantelle works closely with the firm’s pro-bono clients to advise them on navigating high-risk employee situations whilst managing reputational risk, and has been named on the Pro Bono Recognition List for England & Wales for three consecutive years (2024, 2025 and 2026).
Chantelle was shortlisted...
Given the nature of the investigations, litigation and advisory matters that Chantelle is involved in, much of Chantelle’s work on those types of matters is strictly confidential:
Investigations
- Conducting a high-profile investigation in the insurance sector into allegations against senior individuals in an organisation.
- Advising a client in the insurance sector on the robustness of a prior investigation into serious non-financial misconduct.
- Conducting an investigation for a client in the insurance sector following allegations of whistleblowing.
- Conducting investigations for multiple clients into allegations of bullying, harassment and discrimination.
- Advising a US technology client on the UK implications of investigation findings and next steps from a disciplinary perspective.
Litigation matters
- Advising Deloitte LLP on a variety of complex partnership matters and disputes.
- Deloitte LLP in successfully defending a claim for breach of its partnership agreement in the Court of Appeal.
- An engineering company in the successful application for an interim injunction to restrain a former employee from breach of his non-compete.
- Defending employment tribunal claims for unfair dismissal, discrimination and whistleblowing, particularly in the financial services sector.
- Advising on mass equal pay claims in the retail sector.
- Advising on strategy and preparation of documents in respect of mediations (both judicial and private mediations).
Advisory matters
- Advising a bank in relation to serious health and safety allegations made by an anonymous whistleblower about a third party.
- Advising long-standing clients of the firm on a significant number of queries across a range of employment matters (from settlement agreements, redundancy advice, managing sickness absence, performance processes and whistleblowing advice).
- Advising numerous clients on hiring and firing of senior executives and negotiating agreed exits with departing employees in difficult circumstances (e.g. sickness, ongoing grievances, contested redundancy processes).
- Advising a technology company on employment status risks in a business that had significant union and political interest.
Transactions
- Advising on the employment, incentives and pensions aspects for Brazilian paper and pulp producer, Suzano, on its $3.4 billion international tissue joint venture with Kimberly-Clark.
- Advising on the information and consultation obligations of an internal re-org for a life sciences client.
- Advising on the employment, incentive and pensions aspects of multiple acquisitions of founder led businesses for a client in the publishing industry.
- Advising a bank on mitigating integration risk following an acquisition.
Chantelle Nicholas
100 Bishopsgate
London EC2P 2SR