Reading witness statements aloud
Employment tribunals normally expect witnesses to read their statements aloud. If the statements are very short, there’s something to be said for this: it gives the witness an easy task to do while they settle in, and meanwhile everyone else can draw breath and shuffle their papers and remember who this witness is and where they fit in the story. Where the statements are long, it’s pretty mad – but it still often happens.
It’s helpful to know in advance roughly how long this will take, so it’s not a bad idea to run a word count once you’ve finished drafting your statement, and then put the total word count on the last page. The speed at which people read aloud varies, but 160 wpm is about the middle of the range – so for a rough estimate of the number of minutes the witness will spend reading aloud, divide the number of words by 160.
The other thing to take into account is the number of documents the statement refers to. Normally, at least some of these will need to be looked at during the evidence, and this will slow things down. The more documents, the longer it takes.
This tend to make less of an impact as a hearing goes on. At the start of the hearing, the tribunal probably hasn’t read any documents and so will pause often. By the third or fourth witness, they have probably seen most of the important stuff at least once.
In the High Court or County Court, written witness statements are usually taken as read, and very often you will see witnesses go straight into cross-examination after a few formal questions to confirm the truth of their statement. But in the Employment Tribunal, as the above post points out, usually witness statements are read aloud. Why is there this difference in practice?
One reason is that usually Tribunals have much less time for pre-reading than do the ordinary courts. Going straight into cross-examination only works if the court or tribunal has already read and digested the witness statement.
If you have a long case with lots of lengthy witness statements that you would prefer not to have read aloud, then one thing you can do is to ask the tribunal to set aside (say) the first day of the hearing for pre-reading, and thereafter to take witness statements as read. If you want to go down this route it’s a good idea to try and get the tribunal to direct it in advance. Otherwise everyone turns up on the first morning of the hearing and then is sent away while the tribunal does its homework.
There are however other reasons why tribunals prefer to have statements read aloud, quite apart from the lack of time for pre-reading. Sometimes there is a feeling that having to read the statement brings home to the witness that they have to take responsibility for its contents. And some Tribunals also feel that since the hearing is public the evidence ought to be given orally rather than being taken as read. It is to say the least questionable whether these arguments justify the time that is taken up where witness statements are read aloud.