Both sides usually expect it to be faster than it is, and both sides usually prepare for the wrong thing. This is the shape of it.
Employers and employees ask us the same two questions about a tribunal claim, and they are how long and what are my chances. Neither can be answered honestly without saying what the process is, because the process is where most claims are decided.
A claim starts with a filing, and the clock that matters is the one before that. There is a limit on how long after a dismissal a claim can be brought, and we have had to tell people that a good case arrived too late. If you are the employee, get advice in the first fortnight even if you are not sure you want to claim.
Once a claim is filed, the employer is asked to answer it in writing. That answer is the most important document in the matter and it is the one most often written in a hurry. It commits the employer to an account of events, and an account that changes later is far more damaging than an account that was awkward to begin with.
Then comes the part everybody underestimates: documents. The tribunal decides what happened from the papers. Warning letters, meeting notes, attendance records, the contract, the handbook, the messages. If a warning was given in a corridor and never written down, it did not happen as far as the hearing is concerned. This is why we tell employers that their case is won or lost months before the claim, in whether they kept notes.
Hearings are then listed, and listings move. A matter that we hope to see finished in four months can run to eight, and holidays and adjournments are ordinary rather than exceptional. Anybody who promises you a date is guessing.
On the law, the question is usually not whether the employee did what they are accused of. It is whether the employer followed a fair process before acting on it. Employers find this maddening and it is the whole point: a process is the only protection an employee has against a decision made in temper.
Which leads to the advice we give most often, to both sides. Consider settlement early, and consider it properly rather than as a defeat. A settlement at nine weeks that costs a little more than you think is fair is usually cheaper than a win at eight months, and it is very much cheaper than a loss. We will tell you which one we think you are heading for, and we will tell you on the second day rather than the ninetieth.
