Adele is a Partner and Head of Employment at Magrath Sheldrick LLP and a qualified mediator, with over two decades of experience advising employers and senior executives on the most complex and sensitive employment issues.

She is best known for her ability to guide clients through high-stakes moments: litigation, restructuring, executive exits, workplace conflict, and reputational risk. Her work spans the full employment lifecycle, but her real value lies in helping organisations make sound decisions under pressure – balancing legal risk, commercial reality, and human impact.

Adele advises a broad client base, from multinational PLCs to founder-led businesses and senior executives. She has extensive experience in Employment Tribunal and High Court litigation, including injunction proceedings, restrictive covenants, garden leave, team moves, and the protection of confidential information. She is frequently instructed on complex terminations, discrimination and unfair dismissal claims, whistleblowing issues, and the negotiation of executive severance arrangements.

Alongside contentious work, Adele is a trusted adviser on change management and compliance. She regularly supports organisations with restructurings, collective redundancy consultations, TUPE transfers, and large-scale workforce change, including engagement with trade unions and employee representatives. Her advice is pragmatic, commercially grounded, and focused on preventing disputes from escalating unnecessarily.

Adele has particular depth of experience advising senior executives on exits from regulated and high-profile environments, including financial services, healthcare, retail, energy, and sporting bodies. She has also acted in leading cases shaping the law on garden leave and post-termination restrictions, including representing S&GR Valuations in litigation arising from a team move and the misuse of confidential information.

Beyond client work, Adele is a regular speaker and trainer on employment law and workplace risk. She delivers practical clinics and training programmes for HR teams and leadership groups and is the co-author of A Practical Guide to Disciplinary, Grievance & Performance Management (Legalease).

Clients value Adele for her straight-talking advice, calm authority, and ability to see the bigger picture, particularly where legal issues intersect with culture, leadership, and long-term risk.

Outside work, Adele is a keen reader of non-fiction and literature from the Lost Generation, an enthusiastic (if self-critical) tennis player, and a committed skier who briefly flirted with snowboarding. She spends as much time as possible in France, where she continues her long-running effort to master the language.

Notable experience

• Co-author of “A Practical Guide to Disciplinary, Grievance & Performance Management”, published by Legalease.
• Adele represented S&GR Valuations in the case of S&GR Valuations v Bordais and others, a case involving a team move including issues relating to the removal of confidential information. The case testing the law in relation to the right to work and significantly extending the ambit of garden leave.