Laptops in the tribunal
It is becoming more and more common for parties and representatives in the employment tribunals to use laptops in the course of the hearing, and most employment judges will now permit you to do this without any show of surprise.
In a short hearing you may do better with an old-fashioned notebook, but in a case running over several days or more, notes of the evidence taken on a laptop (if your or your note-taker’s typing speed is up to it) can be very helpful. There are two main benefits: legibility and searchability. Trying to make sense of someone else’s handwritten notes of evidence is tiring at the best of times – and late at night between days n and n+1 of a hearing is not the best of times. Having completely legible typed notes that you can search for a particular word in an instant (ctrl+F is a much under-used keyboard shortcut) is extremely time-saving and convenient. If you are taking the notes yourself, you can highlight or bookmark key sections as you go along; and you can paste extracts from your notes of evidence into your written submissions.
If you have a voluminous hearing bundle, save an electronic copy of the index on your laptop if you can: then, if you are hunting for a document in the bundle under pressure of time, you may be able to find it faster by searching for a keyword or a date in the index.
You will of course be much better equipped to take advantage of these benefits if you can touch-type fluently.
