LIVERPOOL employment lawyers last night predicted their casework boom could last for another three years.
The downturn in the economy led to a spike in the number of claimants taking cases to employment tribunals.
Employment law specialists say they are also busy preparing compromise agreements for firms and vetting them for employees.
And businesses are also seeking advice on restructuring and cost cutting without losing staff.
Lawyers say that even though the country has emerged from recession, the public sector cuts being pushed through by the coalition government will mean the sector could remain buoyant until 2013. Andy Cross, head of employment at Brabners Chaffe Street, told LDP Legal: “We’ve got a swathe of public sector staff that are going to go.
“But that will also have a knock-on effect in the private sector.
“People I talk to say it’s going to be three years of slogging it out. By 2013 we may be in clearer water.”
Mr Cross, who mainly works for respondent firms in employment disputes, said that because Merseyside employs a high proportion of public sector workers, it could be hit disproportionately harder than the rest of the country.
He added: “There’s definitely more litigation than there was two years ago.”
Figures recently released by the Tribunals Service reveal there were 236,100 claims made in 2009/10, which was an increase of 56%on the year before.
Mr Cross said he has also seen a rise in the amount of “failure to notify” cases, in which employers fall foul of regulations surrounding making more than 20 employees redundant.
Andrew Newton, employment law specialist at Maxwell Hodge, said: “Employment tribunals are at the highest I have ever seen them, no doubt as a direct result of the impact of the recession.
“However, the figures also indicate that firms aren’t following procedures correctly and employers need to be more careful particularly when making staff redundant.
“With more companies making people redundant they need to take legal advice and ensure that the correct procedures are in place, otherwise they could face hefty compensation costs.”
Quinn Barrow partner Paul Beck said he was involved in more compromise agreements, which are signed when employees agree to leave a firm.
Mr Beck said this was down to “more realism” being brought into the employment law by both business bosses and their employees.
