Bahauddin Foizee

If you think that there would be no legal troubles in terminating or dismissing employees without consulting an ‘external’ law-professional who has ‘expertise’ in providing opinions in this type of matter, please think again. In doing so, you might be inviting troubles.

Please note that the word ‘external’ is put within ‘inverted commas’ in order to differentiate the external law-professionals who are not direct employees of a company from those law-professionals who are employed in a company as the internal law officer/executive or internal legal counsel.

Even if you terminate or dismiss an employee with legal consultation, this legal consultation comes from an internal law officer/executive or internal legal counsel who might not be the right type of law-professional to advise you on the matter.

That is why, there are possibilities that you might end up facing a case filed against you for your alleged violation of relevant laws. By the time you find out that the termination or dismissal was in violation of legal provision related to employment/service/labour law, you’re already late. Already a case is filed against you.

Whether you ultimately win or lose the case, you or your company have to bear the expenses to run the case. You or your company now have to take the extra burden of running a case, only because your company’s internal law officer/executive or internal legal counsel was not expert enough to give the right and appropriate advice regarding the termination or dismissal of that employee.

Only an external lawyer who is not a direct employee of your company and who has legal expertise and experiences on providing opinions on employment/service/labour law related issues — could have given you the right and appropriate advice regarding that termination or dismissal.

So, next time when you decide to terminate an employee and, in the process, don’t want to violate the relevant law and legal provisions, please do seek the precious advice of an external law-professional who has extensive experience in providing opinions on various legal matters, including employment/service/labour law related issues.

In this case, asking a law-professional from ‘corporate law’ field (having expertise on legal opinions) would be wise.

Bahauddin Foizee regularly writes posts related to legal affairs with the intention to help individuals and businesses better understand what should they do to carry-out an action legally without violating law and legal provisions.