If you are representing yourself, and one of the other claimants is represented by lawyers, don’t let the lawyers hog the claimants’ table.
If you are representing yourself in the employment tribunal, re-examination is problematic. How do you re-examine yourself?
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.
Your case is ‘adjourned part-heard’ if the tribunal doesn’t have time to finish hearing it in the time originally allotted. 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. 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.
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.
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 document 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.”
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.
Written submissions are a useful advocacy tool, but it is not always clear when they should be used.
This is an area where personal style and preference matter quite a lot. Both authors use written submissions a lot. Other advocates use them less. But, bearing that in mind, here are some guidelines: