The Employment Rights Act changed the shape of employment law demand. Most firms have not changed their marketing.
New rights create new claim types, and new claim types create enquiries that did not exist before. UK employment practices are heading into a demand shift with websites that still speak to employees and employers through the same funnel, which converts neither well. Here is what changes and what to do about it.
Why is employment law demand changing?
Legislation creates claim types, and claim types create search demand.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduced a package of changes to UK employment rights, and enforcement is consolidating under a new Fair Work Agency from April 2026. Enforcement bodies generate awareness, awareness generates enquiries, and enquiries arrive using whatever language the coverage used.
The firms that benefit are the ones whose pages already answer the specific question a worker is typing, rather than the ones with a general employment law service page waiting to be found.
What is the biggest structural mistake in employment law marketing?
Running employee and employer work through one website and one funnel.
These are opposite buyers. An employee has one urgent matter, is often distressed, has a time limit running, and searches in the evening. An employer buys retained or subscription HR compliance support, has a committee, and takes months.
A homepage that tries to reassure a dismissed worker and reassure an HR director at the same time reassures neither. Separating the funnels is usually the single highest-return change available to a mixed practice.
What is an employment matter worth?
It varies by claim type more than by client, which is why one cost ceiling across the practice does not work.
Unfair dismissal sits in the region of five to fifteen thousand pounds. Constructive dismissal runs higher. Discrimination claims, particularly multi-issue ones, run from fifteen thousand into six figures.
The funding structure matters more here than in most practice areas. Costs are generally not recoverable from the losing side in the employment tribunal, so no win no fee arrangements are far less common than in personal injury. That changes what a client expects to hear on the first call, and it should change what the page says before they get there.
How should the two funnels differ?
Different urgency, different proof, different first action.
Employee side rewards speed and clarity. Time limits are short, the enquiry is emotional, and the firm that responds first frequently wins. Pages should answer the question directly, state the time limit plainly, and make contact immediate.
Employer side rewards authority and specificity. HR directors buy on competence and reliability, respond to sector-specific content, and rarely convert on a first visit. The two need separate cost ceilings, because an employer retainer justifies an acquisition cost that would be reckless on a single tribunal claim.
What does the SRA require you to get right?
Truthfulness, and the December 2024 warning notice is the document to read.
SRA publicity rules require marketing not be misleading. The warning notice on marketing to members of the public covers misleading success claims, unclear fee arrangements, pressure tactics, and firm responsibility for any third party running marketing on its behalf.
Employment marketing has a specific exposure here. Publishing tribunal outcomes as success claims without the surrounding context is the fastest way into difficulty, because outcomes depend heavily on facts the advertisement cannot convey.
What we would look at first
Three things, in this order.
Whether employee and employer enquiries run through separate funnels with separate cost ceilings. Whether an enquiry is graded on claim type and time limit before a fee earner responds. And how long the average callback takes, measured against the fact that a worker with a live time limit will instruct whoever answers first.
Employment enquiries going to the wrong funnel?
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