POSH Legal Advisory

Two kinds of calls come into this practice. One is a proactive HR head who wants a compliance gap analysis before anything goes wrong. The other is a founder or HR lead calling because a complaint has already been filed, a show-cause notice has arrived, or an inquiry is already underway and something feels procedurally off. Both get the same level of direct, specific guidance — not generic reassurance, and not a referral to "consult your lawyer" when the question was already for a POSH specialist.

Compliance gap analysis

Before a complaint ever arrives is the best time to find out whether your Internal Committee is validly constituted, your policy actually reflects your workforce, and your documentation would hold up if challenged. A gap analysis reviews:

• IC composition — Presiding Officer seniority, external member independence, gender ratio, and whether any member's term has quietly lapsed.
• Policy scope — whether it covers remote work, business travel, client sites, and any contract or gig workforce you engage.
• Documentation trail — appointment orders, annual reports filed to date, and training records.
• Governance exposure — particularly for funded startups and listed companies, where POSH gaps increasingly surface in investor due diligence and board reporting.

Active complaint and inquiry guidance

When a complaint is live, timing matters enormously — the 90-day inquiry clock (explained in full in our post on the inquiry timeline) starts running from the day the complaint is received, not from whenever the Committee gets organised. This practice provides real-time advisory support through:

• Reviewing complaint intake and confirming jurisdiction — including the specific, non-obvious scenarios where a complaint must go to the Local Committee instead of your internal ICC, such as a complaint against the employer or founder themselves.
• Guidance on conducting a fair, procedurally sound inquiry — from giving the respondent proper opportunity to be heard, to handling a mid-inquiry complication like an external member's resignation (see our post on that exact scenario) or a complainant's request to withdraw (covered here).
• Reviewing draft inquiry reports and recommendations before they're finalised, to catch procedural defects while they're still fixable.
• Support responding to show-cause notices, regulatory queries, or, where matters escalate, coordinating with litigation counsel while providing the specialist POSH context general counsel often lacks.

Third-party and non-employee complaint scenarios

Complaints involving a client's employee, a vendor representative, or another third party raise distinct questions about jurisdiction and available remedies that generalist counsel frequently gets wrong — we cover the legal framework in our post on vendors, clients, and outsiders as respondents, and provide hands-on advisory when these situations arise in practice.

Staying current on case law

POSH jurisprudence continues to evolve — High Courts regularly issue judgments on procedural fairness, IC composition validity, and the boundaries of "workplace." This advisory practice tracks these developments as a matter of course, so guidance reflects the current legal landscape, not the Act as it stood when a template was first drafted years ago.

How engagements typically work

Advisory support is available as a one-time gap analysis, an ad hoc consultation for a specific live situation, or an ongoing retainer that gives your HR and legal teams direct access when questions come up — which, in our experience, they do more often than most organisations initially expect.

Getting started

Whether you need a proactive review or you're already navigating a live complaint, share the specifics of your situation and we'll advise on the fastest, most legally sound path forward.