There’s something comforting about a good restaurant. You arrive hungry, somebody explains the menu, and a small army of exhausted people performs miracles behind a swinging door. The best kitchens understand restraint. They know when to stop adding ingredients, when the sauce has been reduced enough and when an expensive-looking plate is concealing a fundamentally mediocre piece of meat.
Employment law has its own kitchens. The ingredients are less appetising, the customers rarely leave satisfied and the bill sometimes arrives before anybody has bothered to establish what happened.
Welcome to Horsfield Menzies, where Daniel Rubin offers bespoke commercial solutions without unrealistic rates.
Apparently, the plat de jour est vexatious.
Manchester: Fresh Premises, Reasonable Prices
On 19 May 2024, Daniel Rubin announced that Horsfield Menzies had moved into new offices at Parsonage Chambers in Manchester. Rachel Rigg and Lucy Croft had joined the team, the premises were fabulous and the firm’s ambitions were positively glowing under the corporate lighting.
Rubin advertised a collegiate working environment offering bespoke commercial solutions, without unrealistic targets or rates tied to those of a corporate department.
Fair enough. Employment lawyers need to earn a living. Buildings require heating, employees enjoy being paid and somebody has to keep the expensive coffee machine operational while the rest of humanity attempts to resolve its problems without employing a solicitor.
I have no evidence that Rubin’s hourly rate is excessive. For all I know, he’s the Aldi Specialbuy of employment litigation, offering perfectly respectable legal services at surprisingly competitive prices.
But there is more than one way to achieve an economy.
For example, a man who types at half the normal speed can make extraordinary productivity gains simply by keeping one finger permanently attached to Ctrl and another hovering over V.
Which brings us to the kitchen staff.
Ctrl And V: The Workplace Injury Nobody Investigated
Somewhere in the imaginary machinery of Rubin’s litigation department, a small industrial tragedy is unfolding. Ctrl has developed repetitive strain injury, V’s mental health is in the fucking doldrums and the space bar hasn’t enjoyed a meaningful break since the first respondent discovered the word vexatious.
The word has become an essential ingredient. A little in the correspondence. Another generous helping in the submissions. Sprinkle it over some screenshots, reduce the claimant’s complaints to a thick brown sludge and serve beneath a garnish of professional concern.
Of course, vexatious is a legitimate legal term. It also happens to be exceptionally convenient when the person complaining about discrimination can be recast as the principal problem.
Ctrl has now submitted a workplace grievance. It complains of unreasonable workloads, inadequate rest periods and being repeatedly paired with V against its wishes. V has requested occupational health support, having spent months reproducing material containing the same fucking accusation.
HR has considered both applications.
Unfortunately, the grievances have been classified as vexatious.
The keyboard is appealing.
Daniel, meanwhile, might want to consider another shortcut. Ctrl+Z. It reverses things.
The legal system also has a version, although it usually involves a judge, an appeal and considerably more paperwork.
A Discrimination Claim, Served With 1,657 Pages
The underlying case concerned my allegation that an interview opportunity disappeared following disclosure of mental-health difficulties during recruitment involving Cepac and Page Outsourcing.
That allegation never received a final hearing on its merits.
Instead, the proceedings increasingly concerned my correspondence, language, publications and conduct. Horsfield Menzies represented Cepac, and Daniel Rubin appeared at the hearing on 24 April 2026.
Employment Judge James recorded a principal hearing bundle of 1,657 pages, excluding its index, accompanied by a 136-page authorities bundle. The Tribunal’s electronic file had reached 2,504 pages.
That’s a considerable quantity of paperwork for a case originally concerning an interview.
The Tribunal found that my conduct of proceedings had been unreasonable, scandalous and vexatious. It struck out the claims and ordered me to pay Cepac £20,000 towards legal costs which, according to the judgment, exceeded £50,000.
Those findings are under appeal.
I’m not suggesting Rubin personally typed all 1,657 pages, nor that every page was unnecessary. Some of the underlying correspondence was mine, and the Tribunal made serious findings about my behaviour. The question I continue to raise is whether the resulting sanction was proportionate and the process fair.
Still, there’s something astonishing about the finished dish.
An allegation about a recruitment decision went into the kitchen. An industrial-sized examination of the complainant came out.
The original complaint was never tried.
That was apparently the chef’s special.
The Bill Arrives Before Dessert
Rubin’s Manchester announcement was, among other things, an advertisement for sensible commercial arrangements. No unrealistic targets. No unrealistic rates. Bespoke advice from great lawyers.
The actual hourly rates are not the point here. Neither is there evidence that the £50,000-plus figure represents Rubin’s personal fees.
My question concerns the outcome and the economics of the exercise.
Cepac obtained a £20,000 costs order against an individual who had reported receiving disability-related benefits and having limited means. The Tribunal declined to take those means into account when making its decision.
The award is real. Recovering it is a different commercial proposition altogether.
And the litigation isn’t finished. On 4 November 2026, Cepac applied for the Employment Appeal Tribunal’s sift to be expedited. The application itself proves nothing about the strength of either party’s position, but speed has evidently become desirable.
After all that paper, somebody now wants the next course served promptly.
In a restaurant, you’d send an overcomplicated dish back to the kitchen and ask for the ingredients to be identified. In litigation, apparently, everybody orders another bundle and hopes somebody else picks up the fucking bill.
The House Speciality
I’m not arguing that solicitors should stop using the word vexatious. When supported by the evidence and properly applied, it serves a legitimate legal purpose. I’m arguing that there is something deeply unsatisfactory about the transformation of a discrimination complaint into a sprawling conduct dispute that ultimately prevents the discrimination evidence from receiving a trial.
Rubin’s original article offered clients and potential recruits a firm without unrealistic financial expectations.
Fine. Keep that promise on the menu.
But professional value is not measured solely by the price of an hour. It is also measured by the judgement exercised during that hour, the proportionality of what gets produced and whether the result actually resolves the problem brought through the door.
The employment-law kitchen has produced a mountain of paper, a disputed £20,000 bill and an appeal.
Ctrl is off sick. V is receiving counselling. HR has classified the entire workforce as unreasonable.
And somewhere beneath the legal garnish, almost impossible to recognise after two years in the oven, lies the original allegation about a disappearing job interview.
The kitchen has been cleaned.
The bill has been presented.
Nobody ever served the fucking main course.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project