by Naomi Cunningham & Michael Reed
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:
In general, arguments don’t gain anything by being repeated. This is particularly true in inter-parties correspondence.
This does not prevent people writing essentially the same letter more than once. This can, and does, reach ridiculous proportions.
Most legal documents are written with numbered paragraphs. For example:
- Mr Smith worked for Grindles Ltd as an assembler. He was employed between 21st September 1998 and 3rd December 2007.
- In September 2007 Mr Smith began experiencing difficulties with his left leg, which affected his mobility. His GP diagnosed him with early onset arthritis and referred him to a specialist consultation, Dr Hobbs.
Your claim form will be one of the first things that the tribunal reads, so it is an important document. If the story you tell there is not complete, easy to follow, and convincing, you will start at a serious disadvantage.
George Orwell put the more general point (of which ‘aforesaid‘ is a special case) in his essay Politics and the English Language (1946): Here is…
Maths teachers, much to the frustration of their students, always say to ‘show your working’. They mean that it is not enough to get the right answer, you should also show how you reached it.
This is good advice in legal practice as well.
From Monday Employment Tribunal Chairmen will be renamed Employment Judges in accordance with the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. For representatives and litigants, the…
Litigation involves doing quite a few unpleasant tasks. Some are boring, some are emotionally bruising and some are just difficult. This is as true for…
When writing or speaking to the employment tribunal it is very useful to ‘signpost’ what you are going to say. The aim is to give…