The Agenda

This week on Work and Class, we're talking about accent bias - the subtle form of prejudice that shapes how people are perceived at work, often without anyone consciously admitting it.
 
Accent bias is everywhere. It affects recruitment, career progression, confidence, and even the roles people feel they can aspire to. Yet it rarely gets the attention it deserves.
 
In this episode, we are joined by Dr Kevin Latham, Research and Policy Manager at the Sutton Trust, and Holly Wilcock, an employment associate at Lewis Silkin. Tom Heys explores what the research actually tells us, including a striking statistic that 76% of interviewers admit to being swayed by a candidate's accent.
 
Kevin also unpacks the persistent ranking of accents by prestige and why Northern and Midlands accents consistently come out worst, while Holly shares her own experience of being told her West Country accentwould make it "really difficult to get a job" as a lawyer.
 
Together, they discuss why accent bias gets stronger as people age, why university is often the moment it hits hardest, and what employers can do about it - including one simple, zero-cost intervention that has been shown to make a real difference.

How did Greece implement the EU Pay Transparency Directive in just 33 days?

In this episode of Pay Attention, Tom Heys and David Lorimer and joined by Katerina Papastergiou from Kremalis to explore one of the fastest transpositions of the Directive anywhere in Europe. They unpack the journey from consultation to final law, examine the key changes made along the way, and explain what employers need to know.

The discussion covers employee information rights (including a trailblazing(?) right for employers to refuse requests), the role of worker representatives, enforcement and sanctions, and one of the Greek law's most distinctive features: the central role of the Greek Ombudsman, who has been placed at the heart of every PTD process. 

This week, Pay Attention heads to Northern Ireland. Although the UK left the EU, Northern Ireland occupies a unique legal and constitutional position, raising an unexpectedly tricky question: does the Pay Transparency Directive apply there?

Northern Ireland presents perhaps the biggest legal puzzle of the Pay Transparency Directive.

Employment law is devolved. The UK has left the EU. But Article 2 means the story doesn’t end there.

Joined by Leeanne Armstrong from Lewis Silkin’s Belfast office, Tom Heys and David Lorimer explore what Article 2 actually says, why lawyers disagree about what it means, how Northern Ireland’s own gender pay gap proposals fit into the picture, and, most importantly, what employers should be doing while the lawyers continue to disagree.

It’s an episode about constitutional law, equality law, Brexit and pay transparency. Surprisingly, it all makes sense. Mostly.

Geraint Lloyd-Taylor and Brinsley Dresden are back with a bumper mid-year-round-up of the biggest advertising and marketing law developments of 2026 so far. Fresh from Cannes Lions, they dive into the CMA’s new guidance on agentic AI, the incoming social media ban for under-16s, ASA procedural shake-ups, cosmetics “clinically proven” claims crackdowns, and the CMA’s muscular new enforcement of pricing rules under the DMCC Act, including the Emma Sleep trial, AA driving school’s £4.2m fine, and StubHub’s penalty. 

In this special episode on privilege, Carla Watling and Sohrab Daneshku explore the High Court decision in Aabar v Glencore and what it means for legal advice privilege, including when protection may extend to internal communications within a client group or documents created by a group member, even where no lawyer is involved.  

In this episode of our international privacy podcast series, we welcome Vanessa Riberio, Partner at Gusmão & Labrunie, to discuss the practical implications of Brazilian data protection law for UK and EU businesses looking to expand into one of Latin America's most exciting digital markets.  

We cover the LGPD and its key similarities and differences compared to the GDPR, the EU-Brazil mutual adequacy decisions, the new Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent (Digital ECA) and the red flags and practical watch-outs that could catch UK and EU businesses off guard. The discussion also explores the ANPD's enforcement posture and why businesses should not assume that existing GDPR compliance will automatically cover them in Brazil.

In this episode of the Consumer Law Podcast, Jen Dinmore and Alex Meloy from Lewis Silkin's regulatory team break down the four key areas businesses need to prepare for: enhanced pre-contract information requirements, reminder notices, simplified cancellation processes, and extended cooling-off rights on renewal. They discuss the government's latest consultation response, including the confirmed position on refund rights for digital content, and explain why, with CMA fines of up to 10% of global turnover on the table, the time to act is now. 

Slovakia is one of just four EU Member States to implement the Pay Transparency Directive on time. But that doesn't mean all the answers are clear. In this episode of Pay Attention, Tom Heys and David Lorimer are joined by Dušan Nitschneider to unpack Slovakia's new legislation, including a right to pay information that's both live and not quite live, the race to build compliant pay structures by July 2027, and whether the law could open the door to same-sex equal pay claims. We also explore the role of trade unions in Slovakia, the utility of forthcoming government guidance, and why employers across Europe may be watching Slovakia closely as one of the Directive's earliest adopters.

Our NI AI survey with MCS Group found that 42% of respondents said their biggest barrier to AI adoption was identifying the right use cases. In this episode, Emma Grossmith and Katie Moon walk through a practical framework for finding, assessing, and prioritising AI use cases, covering discovery sessions, the three buckets where use cases cluster, and the four key metrics -readiness, impact, risk, and adoption. 

In this episode, Lucy and Sally discuss the government’s recent NDA consultation and two EAT decisions on protected conversations and offer letters.