Research interests
Simen is a phd fellow and works with labour law. He is affiliated with the Building Labour Law (Arfa) – a programme for research in labour law aimed at consolidating and developing the scientific basis for research and teaching in labour law in a long term perspective.
Simen is writing a thesis on termination agreements, i.e. mutual agreements between an employer and an employee with the aim to terminate an employment relationship. The project analyses the legal limits established by invariable employment law and general rules on invalidity of contracts, and the implications of those limits regarding (a) the parties' legal possibility to enter into termination agreements, and (b) the content of termination agreements. Furthermore, the project deals with fulfilment of termination agreements, both the contractual and non-contractual fulfilment - in the latter case, the rules on breach of contract and remedies. The project concerns the relationship between employment law rules on one hand, and on the other hand contractual freedom and general contract law. The project therefore also aims to address potential patterns of argumentation applicable when other employment law questions (than those related to termination agreements) are discussed.
Background
Simen has been working as a lawyer in the Norwegian law firm Wikborg Rein since 2007, where he has been a partner since 2017 and head of the employment law team since 2019. He is currently on leave from the partnership in order to fulfil his phd thesis. He has been an active participant in the professional labour law environment for several years, and he has been a member of the Norwegian Bar Association's legislative committee for labour law. He has also supervised students and been an external sensor for UiO within labour law for several years.