Of everything on this site, this is the fact that most surprises first-time recipients: by well-established custom, the employer pays a contribution toward the independent legal advice their own document requires you to obtain. It isn’t generosity, and understanding why makes the whole arrangement make sense.
Why the Employer Pays
Follow the finality: the employer’s entire purchase is a waiver that sticks — and under Irish law’s informed-consent doctrine, waivers stick when the employee genuinely understood what they surrendered, with appropriate advice. An employee who couldn’t afford the required advice, or skipped it, is a defective foundation for the finality the employer just paid a package for — which is why the contribution clause is standard drafting, why experienced employers include it without being asked, and why the arrangement genuinely serves both sides: your rights protected, their finality manufactured. In most cases the contribution covers most or all of the cost of the standard review — and here, the position is confirmed with you in writing before any work begins, so there are no surprises in either direction.
When the Clause Is Missing — and the Senior Variant
A missing contribution clause is a flag, not a wall: its absence from first drafts usually reflects drafting haste rather than resistance, and requesting its insertion is the most standard, least controversial ask in settlement practice — often the opening move of any negotiation, granted as a matter of course because refusing it undermines the employer’s own waiver. Where the contribution is present but thin against the work the document actually needs, that gap is discussable too. And at the senior end, the custom scales: enhanced contributions are standard practice for executive exits, where the engagement is negotiation rather than review — sought as a matter of routine within the executive tier, and typically granted for the same finality logic, at the same employer’s initiative that budgeted the exit itself.
The practical takeaway: cost should never be the reason a settlement agreement goes unreviewed — the custom exists precisely so it isn’t, the arrangement is confirmed before work begins, and the document requiring the advice is usually the document paying for it. The only unprotected move is signing without it.
Contribution clause present, missing, or unclear? Confirmed before anything begins: 01 5827148.