5 July 2010 / Naomi
This is a generalisation of quite a lot of posts on this site: if you want someone to do something, make it as easy for them as you can. So, for example:
If you are negotiating, make the other side lose face as little as possible.
If you want information, make your question as clear as you can; and if you have several questions, give them numbers.
If you want the tribunal to do something, tell them under what rule they have power to do it, and explain as clearly as you can why they should.
If you want the other side and the tribunal to adopt your draft list of issues, provide them with copies at the case management discussion.
If you want the other side to agree your chronology, make it neutral – don’t put in events that they say never happened as if it’s agreed that they did.
If you want the tribunal to read something, send them a copy of it. (Even if they’ve had it before: if you’re asking for an order, and telling them a story that goes ‘we said this, but the respondent didn’t bother to answer, then we said something else, then the respondent said something else again,’ it’s much easier for the person reading your letter if you have put in copies of all the previous correspondence you say is relevant. That way they don’t have to go rummaging through their file to check if what you’re saying is true.)
If you want the tribunal to read a report of a previously decided case, give them a copy with the bits you say are relevant marked.
If you want the tribunal to look at a document at the hearing that hasn’t made it into the bundle, come to the hearing with 6 copies of the document, already hole-punched and marked with a proposed page number. (There’s a convention about this: if it’s chronological place in the bundle is between pages 243 and 244 and it is 3 pages long, mark the pages 243a, 243b and 243c.)
Those are just examples. It’s essentially the same point as the advice about only fighting the battles you need to fight: on everything else, do whatever will produce the least friction.
3 July 2010 / Naomi
One of the things that will normally be tackled at a case management discussion is a list of issues. We’ve written about these before – the short point of this post is just that it is very important to make sure everything you’re going to want the ET to decide makes an appearance on the list of issues.
So when you get the order from the tribunal after the case management discussion, look at the list of issues it sets out and check it carefully against your claim. Is there anything you put in your ET1 that isn’t reflected there? If so, is that because you’ve decided since that you’re not going to pursue it? If the answer to the first is ‘yes,’ and the answer to the second is ‘no,’ you need to write to the tribunal straight away (with a copy to the other side) to point out that the list of issues isn’t complete.
The same goes even if the tribunal had adopted a list of issues that you had provided or agreed with the other side. If you left something off it by mistake, you will probably be able to put that right as long as you do it promptly. The closer to the hearing – and the more the new issue adds to the complexity of the case and the amount of evidence you and the other side will have to present – the less keen the tribunal will be to let you add issues to the list.