Janet Gaymer is Head of the Employment Law Department and Senior Partner elect at the City firm of solicitors, Simmons & Simmons. After reading Jurisprudence at Oxford, she joined Simmons & Simmons in 1971. She was admitted as a solicitor in 1973 and became a partner in 1977. She holds a Master of Laws degree from London University.
She has chaired:
· the Law Society’s Committee on Employment Law; and
· the Employment Law Sub-Committee of the City of London Solicitors Company.
She has been the Founder Chairman of:
· the UK Employment Lawyers Association (and continues as Life Vice President of the Association);
· the European Employment Lawyers Association (and continues as Honorary Chairman); and
· the St Hilda’s College Law Network.
With effect from 1 May 1995 she was appointed to the Council of the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, and was re-appointed to the Council for a second term in May 1998. She is a member of the Executive Board of “Justice”. She sat on the “Justice” Committee which reviewed and made proposals for the reform of the procedures, jurisdiction, constitution and expertise of the industrial tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (report published 1987).
She is also a member of the editorial advisory boards of Sweet & Maxwell’s Encyclopaedia of Employment Law and of Tolley’s “Health and Safety at Work”.
She has twice been voted the “Experts’ Expert” in a survey undertaken by “Legal Business”. In April 1997 she received “The Times” Woman of Achievement in the Law Award. In June 1997 she was designated one of the “One Hundred Lawyers of Influence” by “The Lawyer” magazine. In 1998 she was the winner of the Partner of the Year Award in the annual Lawyer: HIFAL Awards.
She is an Honorary Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies, and a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is a Patron of the Association of Women Solicitors. During the summer of 1998 she was a Visiting Law Fellow at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she studied and reflected upon the definition of the employment relationship (as opposed to the contract of employment) in relation to, among other things, international labour standards. She is the author of “The Employment Relationship”, published by Sweet & Maxwell in 2001.
In 1999, she became a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Also in 1999 she was a member of the international project team which launched the European Women Lawyers Association in Berlin.
She is married to another solicitor and has two children.
Profile in members database:
Janet Gaymer