It can be easy to forget that an employment law relationship is also a legal relationship. It is common for both employers and employees to run into employment law issues related to their workplace. As lawyers have a reputation of being expensive, the first place that you might go to understand your employment law issue is online. Simply searching up your employment law issue on sites like Google will likely result in you finding blogs and government websites that make suggestions on how you can solve your employment law issue. However, relying on these websites can be costly, as they do not represent good legal advice.
Employment law is always changing, and these changes can be hard to follow if it is not your profession. As such, there is widespread employment law information about outdated practices. It can be easy for an employer or employee to deem outdated information as true because the blog they found it on was written by a still practicing lawyer only a few years ago.
Outdated information is a growing issue as employment law changes rapidly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Employers are taking new approaches to the employment relationship in response to the pandemic. The law now addresses what responses are acceptable. There are still new costly court rulings on what approaches an employer can take in the pandemic that were not accepted in the past. A good example is how courts are now accepting an employer's right to impose a mandatory vaccination policy.
Employment law is also confusing. Such confusion results misinformation being found by employers and employees. Though you may be tempted to look at primary sources, like legislation, you will quickly find that it is not always written in plain language. There can be a lot of legalese that you do not understand if you do not practice in the employment law field. Misinformation can seem to clarify boring and confusing legislation. Such misinformation can be convincing, sometimes it uses the same language that is found in the legislation. However, properly using legislation is a complicated task. You must figure out if your industry is federally or provincially regulated and you need to read recent case law to understand how the appropriate legislation has been interpreted. That is a task better suited for an employment lawyer.
Regardless of whether you are an employer or an employee, you will likely find a lot of information that will seem positive for your case. This phenomenon is referred to as a "feedback loop." As websites are interested in keeping you on their site and seeing their ads, they will prioritize showing you things that they think will keep you happy. It is surprising how little data is required for algorithms to figure out your interests. However, these feedback loops are dangerous as they might give you a false sense that you are in good legal standing. Disinformation is also a big issue in the feedback loop, as people will publish information that they know is false if it allows them to profit off of ads. Disinformation is hard to detect when you want to believe that the information published is true, as it could be good for your case. An employment lawyer can see through this disinformation and give you a fair and balanced assessment of your case.
How Suzanne Desrosiers Professional Corporation can help
Hiring an employment lawyer at an early stage of an employment law issue is often the most cost-effective way to address an employment law issue. The employment lawyers at Suzanne Desrosiers Professional Corporation can help assess the uniqueness of your employment law issue. Our lawyers can also advise on mitigating strategies that you can use to avoid your employment law issue from getting costly. Many employers and employees have gotten burnt for not seeking out good legal advice at an early stage. You can get in contact with one of our employment lawyers by calling us at 705-268-6492.