Compare two contrasting approaches to a practical request:

(1) Why do you never pay any attention to anyone’s needs but your own? I’m sitting here watching the scum form on my tea while you spread marmalade all over the paper - which by the way it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that anyone else might ever want to read - and shovel toast into your face and the milk’s sitting by your elbow but you can’t be bothered to wonder if I might need it, oh no, number 1 has been taken care of and that’s all that matters isn’t it? Really you are the most selfish person I have ever met!

(2) Could you pass me the milk, please?

Obviously, (2) is much more likely to get you the milk than (1), because in (1) your immediate practical need is largely drowned out by a lot of noise about your larger dissatisfaction with the behaviour of your spouse or house-mate.

Much the same goes for letters and requests to the other side or the tribunal in the course of litigation: just saying simply and civilly what you want them to do and why is much more effective than launching into a long tirade about the respondent’s shortcomings. The latter introduces ‘noise’ into your correspondence that will tend to obscure what you are really trying to communicate and make it less likely that you get what you’re after. It also wastes everyone’s time and energy.

Long letters from the other side are a pretty reliable sign that they are making this mistake: it is rare that there is any practical need to write a letter in the course of litigation that extends beyond about a page and a half.

Don’t be drawn in. If you get a long quarrelsome letter from the other side, pick up a highlighter and highlight those bits that actually ask you to do something. Decide whether or not you are prepared to do whatever you are being asked to do, and write a short letter back telling them that, and explaining briefly why.

Ignore the rest of the letter.

See also I don’t object!

Tribunal hearing rooms are laid out with a long desk on a slightly raised platform for the tribunal, and facing that, a table for the witness and a table each for claimant and respondent; and behind the tables, probably a row or two of chairs for members of the public, witnesses waiting their turn, the Press and so on. The parties’ tables will be occupied by the parties and/or their lawyers.

That is straightforward when there is one claimant and one respondent. Things get a little more complicated - not to say crowded - where there are several claimants, especially if some are represented and some are not. If you are representing yourself, and one of the other claimants is represented by lawyers, don’t let the lawyers hog the claimants’ table. As a party representing yourself, you just as much entitled to the convenience of a table to sit at and spread your papers out on as the lawyers representing one of your colleagues. If you sit there, it will also help keep the tribunal aware of the fact that the lawyer isn’t representing all the claimants, and you may have questions to ask or submissions to make.

If you are representing yourself in the employment tribunal, re-examination is problematic. How do you re-examine yourself?

It may help if you ask the tribunal’s permission to have a blank notebook and a pen with you when you are cross-examined. The tribunal may find this a surprising request - witnesses don’t normally take notes while they are giving evidence - but if you are representing yourself, you have to play two parts at once. You are the witness, but you are also the claimant’s representative. If you had a representative, she would be busily taking notes while you were cross-examined, and in particular noting points to return to in re-examination. It is hardly fair if you are expected to commit any points you want to return to to memory under all the stress of giving evidence. Point this out - and mention the overriding objective for good measure - and the tribunal may grant your request.

If you have a lot of heavy papers to get on and off trains and up and down steps on your way to the tribunal, wear a skirt: you are much more likely to be offered help than if you’re wearing trousers.

(Note: the intrepid bloggers have not tested the point, but suspect that this only works if you’re a woman.)

Your case is ‘adjourned part-heard’ if the tribunal doesn’t have time to finish hearing it in the time originally allotted. The same tribunal will rarely if ever be available to continue the case immediately, so this probably means that the hearing won’t restart for several weeks at least, and quite often for some months.

It is inconvenient and annoying for everyone when this happens. The story is interrupted: the tribunal members will have heard other cases meanwhile and forgotten a lot of the evidence that they have heard so far. Impressions – good and bad – that witnesses have made will have faded. The advocates’ knowledge of the documents and the evidence will be stale, and their own scribbled notes will have become inscrutable. Everyone will have to spend time, when the case comes back, re-familiarising themselves with the story so far.

If this happens to you, one thing you can do to make your task at that point less daunting is to write yourself some re-reading notes while the case is still fresh in your mind:

This is advice often give to aspiring novelists. The idea is that your story will be more vivid if you let the characters of the people you are writing about emerge from their actions than if you just describe what they are like. (There’s a much fuller explanation on Wikipedia.) ‘Actions speak louder than words’ expresses much the same idea.

When you write your witness statement, you are telling a story. Unlike a novel, your statement must be true. But ’show, don’t tell’ is still good advice. Don’t say “Miss Claverham behaved disgracefully by doing so-and-so… ” or “It showed how Miss Claverham always wanted to put me down when she said… ” Just say what she did, and what she said. The tribunal will have to decide for itself what it thinks her behaviour demonstrated, and whether it was disgraceful - or, more to the point, unlawful. Your account will have more impact if you resist the temptation to load it down with judgment and comment of your own.

As with most rules, there will be exceptions. If you are claiming compensation for injury to feelings in a discrimination case, you will have to say how the discrimination has made you feel. Sometimes it is just too time-consuming to show: if, for example, a judgment about someone’s character is part of the background to you story, but not a central part of what you have to prove in order to succeed in your claim, you may want to say “Everyone found Miss Claverham difficult and demanding, and none of the secretaries wanted to work for her” instead of taking several pages to describe sufficient instances of her behaviour to allow the tribunal to see what she was like.

Sometimes another party in a case will make an application about something in which you have no stake or interest.

This is most common in cases with many different parties. Often a disclosure debate between the first claimant and the second respondent will be irrelevant to the third claimant.

In this situation it is sensible, if you are copied into the correspondence, to let everyone know you have no comment to make.

This avoids a situation in which the relevant parties have said their piece, but the tribunal is waiting for the 14 days given to respond before making a decision. Nothing terrible will happen if this occurs, but it is normally sensible to keep the litigation moving forward.

One of the types of order that the tribunal can make is an ‘unless order’. This is an order in the form: “Unless you do that, this will happen”.

For example, the tribunal may order “Unless the Claimant discloses all the documents on which he intends to rely by the 1st May, his claim will be struck out”.

Unless orders are usually made when a party has failed to comply with previous orders. They are a way of the tribunal saying “This is your last chance. Sort this out, or else.”

Your aim should be not to get into a situation where the tribunal makes this type of order. But if they do, it is vital that you comply with it - to the letter and on time.

This is even more important following the case of Chukwudebelu v Chubb Security. The Court of Appeal has ruled that an unless order takes effect automatically if not complied with.

In other words, if, in the example above, the claimant fails to disclose his documents by the 1st May, his claim will be considered struck out at that point. The tribunal will not have to make a second order to do so. This means there will be no opportunity for explanation, apologies or excuses. It will have happened.

If the worse happens and it really is impossible to comply with the unless order, it is vital that you make an application to vary it before it takes effect. This should be done in sufficient time that the tribunal can make a decision to change the order before the deadline for compliance.

Chukwudebelu v Chubb Security

There may be good uses for four-ring ring-binders, but hearing bundles in four-ring binders are a pain. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the two extra holes - it’s just that it so happens that there are far more 2-hole hole punches knocking around employment tribunals and lawyers’ offices than 4-hole hole punches. If you have a 4-hole bundle to which extra pages need to be added during the hearing, either they have to be forced onto the rings so that they don’t fit properly and won’t turn smoothly, or else someone has to scrabble around hunting for the elusive 4-hole hole punch.

So just use a standard 2-hole binder like everyone else, ok?

I’m running the London Marathon on Sunday. Partly for fun, but I’m also raising money for the Free Representation Unit.

FRU is charity that provides representation to people who can’t afford to pay lawyers. In the last year we’ve helped 700 people, about 300 in employment tribunals. I work there as Legal Officer.

If you’d like to help, donations can be made through Just Giving. Any contribution you would like to give would be very welcome and will be put to good use.