Before Jiten Kotecha became Cummins’ senior employment lawyer, there was Pinsent Masons. Trainee seats, corporate deals, employment advice and the polished machinery used to explain why somebody else’s workplace was about to change. Then, in 2013, the machinery swivelled around. Pinsent Masons decided its own employment practice needed a different “size and shape”. Thirteen fee-earners were heading for the exit. Welcome to Jiten’s Jobs.
There is something almost perfect about beginning a career in employment law at a large commercial law firm.
First you learn the language. Restructuring. Consultation. Business need. Selection pools. Organisational change. Commercial pressures. A job never simply disappears. Instead, the operating model has evolved. Nobody is just being fucked off. Resources are being aligned with demand.
Then somebody walks into your own department carrying exactly the same vocabulary.
Welcome to Pinsent Masons.
Jiten Kotecha Enters The Machine
The Solicitors Regulation Authority records Jiten Kotecha as admitted as a solicitor on 1 September 2010. His professional career began at Pinsent Masons, first as a trainee solicitor and then in employment law.
By February 2013, however, there is no need to rely on biography or LinkedIn varnish.
Pinsent Masons put his name on the fucking receipt.
The firm had advised US software company Coaxis, trading as Viewpoint Construction Software, on its acquisition of Newcastle-based 4Projects. Corporate lawyers handled the deal. Tax handled tax. Property handled property. Meanwhile, pensions handled pensions.
Under employment sat Ed Goodwyn and Jiten Kotecha.
That matters.
Jiten’s Jobs is not interested in reconstructing a career from motivational sludge about commercial awareness and stakeholder engagement. Fortunately, Pinsent Masons preserved something much more useful. Kotecha was doing employment work on a real corporate acquisition involving a functioning business and its employees.
This was the trade.
Companies change hands. Workforces move with them. Lawyers make sure the paperwork survives the journey.
January: The Employment Lawyers Explain Employment
Pinsent Masons entered 2013 in full employment-law oracle mode.
On 4 January, the firm published an employment-law guide explaining how the workplace would change during the year. Tribunal fees were coming. Settlement agreements were coming. Employee-shareholder arrangements were on the horizon. Flexible working was changing.
The lawyers had climbed the hill and returned with stone tablets.
Employers were told what they needed to know. Workers could see what to expect. Above all, Pinsent Masons was explaining how workplace change would operate.
The corporate employment-law industry is very good at this. It stands beside the machinery explaining where all the moving parts go while somebody upstairs decides how many moving parts they still want.
In January, then, Pinsent Masons was explaining workplace change to everybody else.
A few months later, workplace change arrived at Pinsent Masons.
February: Jiten Does The Deal
On 11 February 2013, Pinsent Masons published its announcement about the 4Projects acquisition.
It is classic commercial law-firm material. Growing American technology company. Successful British software business. International transaction. Exciting opportunities. Strategic development.
Everybody is delighted.
The future, apparently, has arrived carrying an acquisition agreement.
Kotecha and Goodwyn are named on the employment side of the transaction.
Then we turn two pages of the calendar.
April : Surprise, Motherfuckers
On 11 April 2013, Legal Business reported that Pinsent Masons was cutting 13 fee-earners from its employment practice.
Not reception.
Not facilities.
Certainly not the poor bastard replenishing the seminar biscuits.
Employment.
The department containing lawyers whose professional business included restructuring, dismissal and redundancy was itself being restructured.
Legal Business described it as the firm’s third redundancy round since the merger with McGrigors. Earlier cuts had affected support staff. This time, however, the blade reached the fee-earners.
There must have been a funny little change in atmosphere around the employment floor.
The legislation remained the same.
The coffee probably tasted different.
The Right Size And Shape
Pinsent Masons had an explanation.
Of course it did.
Contemporary reporting recorded the firm’s position that employment-market dynamics had shifted and that the restructuring would leave the practice with the “right size and shape” to meet demand.
There it is.
Employment-law concentrate.
Nobody has to say there are too many of you and we would prefer fewer. That would sound unpleasant. Instead, the department merely requires a new size and shape.
Somewhere inside the spreadsheet, thirteen lawyers have become excess geometry.
Corporate employment language has had decades to perfect this trick. First, a person becomes a role. Then the role becomes a requirement. After that, the requirement becomes a cell. Finally, the cell becomes something management can delete while everybody remains impeccably professional.
The employment lawyers would have understood every word.
That may have been the cruelest bit.
Please Attend A Meeting With HR
There is no evidence TCAP has found that Jiten Kotecha himself was one of the thirteen fee-earners made redundant, and this article does not suggest that he was.
It does not need to.
On 11 February, Pinsent Masons publicly named Kotecha as one of its employment lawyers working on a corporate acquisition.
By 11 April, the legal press was reporting that thirteen fee-earners in the employment practice were being cut.
Sixty days.
You could barely get the consultation-room biscuits ordered in that time.
The point is not personal involvement in the redundancy exercise. Rather, the point is the professional habitat.
Corporate transaction at one end.
Workforce reduction at the other.
Between them sits the employment lawyer, translating business decisions into process, advice and legal risk.
The Business Case Comes Upstairs
There is an occupational hazard in advising companies for a living.
Eventually, you discover that your own employer is also a company.
Revenue changes. Demand moves. Mergers create overlap. Management reviews headcount. Somewhere along the way, somebody builds a deck. Before long, words such as utilisation, efficiency and capacity begin appearing more frequently in meetings.
Knowing the terminology does not protect you.
If anything, it might make the whole experience worse.
Spend your working life explaining that redundancy concerns the role rather than the individual, and eventually your own role may develop an unexpected appointment with Human Resources.
Likewise, advise clients about meaningful consultation for long enough and you may find yourself wondering whether the conclusion sitting at the end of your own consultation already has a fucking postcode.
That is employment law without the conference badge.
The people who explain the business case can become the business case.
Pinsent Masons Knew The Weather
Pinsent Masons was not exactly unaware of what was happening in the employment market.
In January 2013, the firm was publishing analysis about City sackings and suspensions reaching a five-year high. Financial-services dismissals, suspensions and wider job losses were being counted, analysed and explained.
The employment lawyers knew the weather was filthy.
They had the charts, the regulatory data and the commentary. More importantly, they had the professional vocabulary to explain exactly why it was happening.
Then the rain came through their own roof.
That is the small institutional oddity at the centre of the first Jiten’s Jobs piece. Employment law is usually presented from the safe side of the desk. The lawyer advises. The company decides. Somebody else receives the letter.
For a moment at Pinsent Masons, the desk rotated.
A Useful Education
This is why Pinsent Masons matters to the Jiten Kotecha story.
Not because a major law firm made people redundant. Large firms restructure. Markets change. Departments contract. Lawyers leave.
What matters is the education.
Kotecha began his career inside an institution where employment law was commercial infrastructure. Employment specialists sat alongside corporate, property, tax and pensions lawyers while businesses were acquired, reorganised and advised.
Employment law, therefore, was not merely a collection of rights printed in a textbook.
It was process.
Risk.
Commercial consequence.
And when the economics demanded it, the institution selling that expertise used the same machinery on itself.
That is quite an introduction to the profession.
Next Stop: KPMG
Kotecha left Pinsent Masons for KPMG in 2013.
Another enormous professional-services machine. Another glass building full of people explaining corporate risk to corporations.
He would stay there for around five years.
Among the employment subjects later associated with his KPMG work was gender pay gap reporting.
Which is fortunate.
Because KPMG had a gender pay gap you could drive a fucking audit team through.
But that is the next commute.
For now, close the consultation-room door behind you.
Jiten’s first job has done its work.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Pinsent Masons – Pinsent Masons Advises Coaxis On The Purchase Of 4Projects
- Legal Business – Redundancies : Pinsent Masons To Lose 13 Fee-Earners In Employment Reshuffle
- Global Legal Post – Pinsent Masons Wields Axe Over Employment Team
- Pinsent Masons – How The Workplace Will Change In 2013
- Pinsent Masons – City Sackings And Suspensions Reach Five-Year High
- Solicitors Regulation Authority – Jiten Kotecha
- TCAP – Jiten Kotecha, Cummins’ Senior Counsel With The Dirty File