A paper-heavy case – where the hearing bundle runs to several volumes and there are a dozen witnesses or more – presents various specific difficulties. The main one of course is that there is a lot of material to get your head round. There’s no quick fix for that: preparation will take a long time.

This post just offers a handful of very small ways to make life easier.

1. Label the inside cover of each volume of your bundle with the volume number and the page range. That way, you’ll be able to identify the different volumes of your bundle at a glance when they’re open on the desk in front of you.
2. Print your own copy of the bundle double-sided. It’ll weigh half as much and take up half as much space. There will be some minor inconvenience (e.g. where you need to insert additional pages after the bundle is printed), but the reduction in general hassle is worth it. If you want to reduce your bundle to quarter size and you have good eyesight, print it double-sided on A5 paper.
3. Write the name or initials of the witness at the top of each page of the witness statement. (If it’s your statement, include it in the ‘header zone’ of the document; if it’s the other side’s, and they haven’t done that, just write it on each page.)
4. Print claimant and respondent witness statements on different coloured paper, so you can tell at a glance which is which.

Some employment disputes just are about really bad behaviour. If you’ve suffered sexual harassment, or racist or homophobic abuse, for example, there’s no pleasant way of saying it. The chances are your employer will deny it, and you’ll end up in the sort of hearing where feelings run high, and serious and discreditable allegations – including allegations of lying to the tribunal – are made on both sides.

But lots of disputes are altogether less personal. Suppose your employer has closed down your workplace and offered you alternative work 30 minutes further from your home. You’ve refused the alternative work, and claimed redundancy. They have said you’re not entitled to redundancy pay, because you’ve refused an offer of suitable alternative employment.

If you’re right, you get your redundancy pay; if your employer’s right you don’t. Obviously you’d like to have the money, and they’d prefer not to give it to you. Obviously you’ll both do your best to win the dispute. But no-one’s really behaving badly here, are they? It’s just both sides legitimately seeking to further their own interests.

A dispute like this ought to be able to be conducted from start to finish in a calm and polite manner, without either side causing the other any particular offence.

If most of your dispute is of this nature, but one aspect of it involves allegations of really bad behaviour, do think carefully about whether you really need to run the ‘nasty’ part. It will raise the temperature of proceedings a great deal, and make the whole case harder and more stressful to fight – and much harder to settle. So run it if you think it has a strong prospect of success and it is going to make a significant difference to how much compensation you can claim. If it doesn’t tick both those boxes, ditch it.

If you arrive at the tribunal on your own, or on your own apart from a representative or a family member, it can be quite intimidating to see 2 or 3 managers and half your former employer’s HR department there on the other side.

Try not to take this personally, or let it worry you unduly.

First, even if all of these people are proposing to give evidence, it doesn’t necessarily put you at a disadvantage: witnesses lose cases more often than they win them – by wheeling out a lot of witnesses, your employer may actually be improving your chances.

And if several of your former colleagues are there just to observe proceedings, it can feel like a calculated attempt to intimidate you. But it probably isn’t: more likely, it’s just that it’s useful for them to see what the process is like. For most managers and HR people, ET hearings are both a fairly rare event, and a stressful one. It’s useful for managers to see their colleagues having to defend their decisions under cross-examination in a case in which they are not directly involved: for one thing, they may learn things that make it less likely for their decisions to be challenged in tribunal in the first place; and if they do ever have to give evidence in a tribunal hearing in the future, at least they will have seen the process before, so it won’t be completely unfamiliar.

… point your feet at the employment judge.

Witnesses are constantly reminded to address their answers to the tribunal. When you’re being questioned by your employer’s representative, or your own, the natural thing is to give your answers to the person who has asked the questions. But it’s essential that the tribunal hears your evidence – and they are probably sitting further away from you than the respondent’s representative. So if you address your answers to them, everyone should be able to hear.

The trouble is, it feels odd – and actually quite rude – to turn away from the questioner and give your answer to someone else, and witnesses constantly forget to do so. Sometimes they forget so often that the tribunal gets a bit sharp with them, which adds to the stress of an already stressful situation.

This is where your feet come in. If you keep your feet pointed at the employment judge, you’ll have to twist slightly to look at the representatives, and the natural tendency to untwist as soon as possible will help you keep your answers directed to the panel.

(This isn’t original – I can’t remember where I heard it first, but it’s a good tip.)

I recently had a mildly unsettling experience at the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

When the clerk called me in he mentioned that HHJ McMullen QC followed the old tradition of a relaxed dress code in hearings during August, so if I wanted to take my jacket off I could. (This tradition is new to me, but I assume it stems from the fact that, in The Good Old Days, courts used to shut down in August.)

This might not sound particularly disturbing news, but minutes before a hearing is due to start, it’s the sort of thing that can grab a larger share of your attention than it deserves. “Is it really appropriate to take my jacket off? Will it look too informal? But if I don’t will the Judge think I’m a prat?”

I decided that the room was rather warm; that the clerk was in his shirt-sleeves and that I could hardly get in real trouble for following a suggestion made by the Judge.

So I took my jacket off. The judge was also without a jacket. So far as I can tell, it made no difference whatsoever to the hearing or the result.

The point of this post is two-fold.

First, if you have a hearing in the EAT in August in front of HHJ McMullen, be warned that you too may have to resolve the perplexing jacket dilemma.

Second, I think it’s worth saying that almost everyone suffers these weird social wobbles from time to time. High stress, unfamiliar or hierarchical environments are particularly likely to push us off balance. It almost never matters and other people hardly ever notice – with the clarity of hindsight I can see that HHJ McMullen couldn’t possibly have cared less whether I was wearing a jacket or not.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service is currently trying to make more efficient use of their estate (i.e. the buildings they own).

Historically, different courts and tribunals have tended to keep to themselves, with employment tribunals happening in designated employment tribunal buildings; tax tribunals happening in tax tribunal buildings and so on. Most of these buildings contained both hearing rooms and the admin staff dealing with the cases.

This is changing as HMCTS tries to make the system more efficient and less expensive. What this means, at least at the moment, is that some tribunal hearings are being listed away from the tribunal office.

So, if your notice of hearing says ‘Ambridge Magistrates Court’, don’t panic. You have not been somehow misrouted into into the criminal justice system. They’re just borrowing a spare room.

If you are involved in one of these cases it’s worth being a bit careful to avoid embarrassing mistakes. Don’t turn up at the Employment Tribunal office if you’re actually being heard down the road at the Social Entitlement Chamber’s building. And send letters to the Employment Tribunal Office, even if the hearing is happening somewhere else.

We have both previously posted about Mehta v Child Support Agency, in which the EAT doubted the usefulness of having witnesses read their statements aloud: see Reading statement aloud and Follow up on witness statements.

Another consequence of the shift in practice this has caused is that tribunals are more likely to want to pre-read not only the witness statements, but also the key documents they refer to. This means it’s a good idea to have formed a view before the hearing starts which documents the tribunal is going to need to read in full, and roughly how long it’s going to take them. Agree a pre-reading list with the other side if possible.

How do you decide which documents to put on your list? This isn’t a hugely important decision, so don’t agonise over it – but sensible decisions will help the hearing go more smoothly, so a few rules of thumb may be helpful.

How long will pre-reading take?

It depends, of course. How many pages there are to read. Whether they are single or double spaced. Whether they are typed or handwritten; and if handwritten – whether by a primary school teacher or a doctor. How quickly the slowest member of the tribunal reads. Whether they are clear and succinct, or waffly and verbose.

For now, try 50 pages an hour as a rough rule of thumb. And please make a note in your next hearing of how many pages you ask the tribunal to read, and how long it takes them – and then comment on this post, so that we can collect some data and refine this estimate.

A few months back, Naomi wrote about Mehta v Child Support Agency, where President Underhill suggested that it was not always necessary for witnesses to read their statements aloud.

As Naomi suggested at the time, the case does seem to have caused a shift in tribunal practice. Although not the invariable rule, it has become much more common for statements to be read by the tribunal over a break in proceedings and, therefore, for cross-examination to begin almost immediately after a witness is sworn in.

This is worth noting for three reasons. First, tribunals are stressful, and it’s easy to be thrown if things don’t proceed quite as you expect.

Second, if you want a witness to read part or all of their statement, you need to be ready to explain why it’s necessary.

Third, if you’re used to cross-examining witnesses after they’ve read their statements aloud, you may have become reliant on the time that takes to catch your breath, shuffle your notes, remember who this witness is and where the fit into the story, re-read some of the documents they refer to, take a short nap, and so on. Not having witnesses read their statements aloud means everything moves along at a brisker pace, and you’ll have to cross-examine one witness straight after another .

When you arrive at the tribunal, it’s normal to introduce yourself to the other side. Often there is something specific to discuss – last minute negotiations, late evidence, a postponement request or similar. Even if there is not, it is sensible to check in with them, if only because they may have something specific to deal with.

If you don’t know the other side’s representative, the standard approach is to put your head round the door of the Respondent’s waiting room and say, in a carrying tone, ‘Is there anyone here for Smith v Hogan?’

It’s best to use both parties’ names. It gives your opponent two chances to recognise the case and, if you (or your opponent) has got the pronunciation of one name wrong, they should recognise the other one. This sounds a bit silly, but bear in mind that your opponent may be busy reading something in the bundle, on the phone to their solicitor, or otherwise distracted.

If your opponent is there, she should stand up and introduce herself. When both sides are represented, the representatives will then normally step outside the waiting room to talk.

Quite often, a represented party will have arrived before their lawyer. In general, you shouldn’t go into the detail of a case with a represented party. It’s perfectly all right to say something like: ‘We’ll be wanting to rely on a few additional documents – here are copies for you. Perhaps you could ask your lawyer to come speak to me about this when he arrives?’ But a detailed discussion of the case or negotiations should wait for the lawyer to arrive.

Tribunals and lawyers will sometimes refer to a ‘Judge sitting alone’. This means that he is sitting without the lay-members. This is common in case management discussions and pre-hearing reviews.

What it doesn’t mean is that the judge will sit alone in the sense that nobody else will be there. If you’re a party or representing a party, you still need to go.

Of course, sometimes the tribunal will meet without the parties, usually to discuss their decision. This is called a ‘hearing in chambers’. Another similar bit of jargon is a hearing ‘in private’, which means that the tribunal, parties and representatives attend, but the public may not.

Like a lot of jargon, this is fairly obvious to lawyers. Non-lawyers may wrongly conclude that the words mean what they seem to mean, and not what lawyers have decided that they mean. If you are ever unsure, ask.