Say what you want

A lot of the conversations and correspondence, during litigation is about providing other people with information and receiving information from them.

But you shouldn’t stop once you have provided or received the information. Go on to say what you want to do about it.

For example, say you are waiting for an expert report, and the expert contacts you to say he will be several weeks late providing it. You should certainly contact the other side and let them know. But you should consider whether the other case preparation will need to be changed, so that you can make proposals at the same time.

Similarly, say that one of your witnesses have been taken ill, shortly before the tribunal. Both the tribunal and the other side will need to know. But you also need to think how you want to handle the situation. Will the hearing need to be postponement? Or can the witness give evidence later in the hearing?

By setting out how you want to deal with a situation you maintain a degree of control over it. Either the tribunal or the respondent may disagree with your proposals, but once you have made them, you have taken the initiative. You are more likely to get what you want than if you wait for someone else to make a suggestion, then try to modify that.

You also avoid delay, as the tribunal’s response to a letter informing them of something will often be a slightly more formal version of “Okay, so what do you want to do about it?”