Case Management Orders

In most routine cases, the next step, after the ET1 and ET3 have been filed and the claim has successfully navigated Initial Consideration, is for the tribunal judge to issue a “standard” case management order — a list of the steps the parties must take to carry the claim forward in the tribunal. Here are the usual directions in a standard case management order:

• for both parties to make a list of the relevant documents they hold, to provide copies to the other party and to prepare an agreed, indexed and paginated “bundle” (i.e. a photocopy set of the relevant documents). This set of documents will be the documentary evidence placed in front of the tribunal at the final hearing of the claim;

• to prepare and then exchange (i.e. simultaneously swap) witness statements. These set out each party’s truthful account of what happened; and

• for the parties to attend a hearing for the claim to be tried and decided.