The steps you need to know about to make an employment tribunal yourself without a lawyer. I am also going to walk you through completing the ET1 form which is the first formal step you take to lodge your formal claim, however, there are a few steps before you get to that stage so I am going to take you through the process. I have helped lots of people take the necessary steps in going through with making a employment tribunal claim and to date just three student in the last couple of months who have followed my advice and training plans have got over £40,000. One student got their initial offer increased from £7 thousand to £20,000 just by following my advice and approach to moving forward with an employment tribunal claim. You do not need a lawyer and to spend thousands of pounds you just need some, tenacity, basic knowledge and a great teacher!
So I am going to break this down in three steps. The making the claim process, the preparation and documentation stage and then the hearings- which you only need to watch if you get that far and don’t get an opportunity to settle before that.
So the key things you need to know about making the claim.
Number one is the timelines, you have 3 months less a day to make a claim- I try to make it easy and say 89 days. So you need to count from your termination date, which is either the day you left, or the day you had a letter or formal communication to say you had been fired and count on from that date to determine how long you have to make a claim. Don’t get confused if you have been made redundant and think you have 6 months, you don’t have 6 months for unfair dismissal due to redundancy, you only have 6 months if you think you are eligible to make a claim for redundancy pay. If this is making sense to you so far please write, 89 days in the comments below. That’s how long you’ve got to submit a claim to early conciliation or an ET1 form.
So provided you are in time the first thing you need to do is submit an early conciliation claim, this will stop the clock too. If you’re interested I have a course that shows you how to use early conciliation to your advantage to strategically get a settlement package at this point. As I believe it’s worth taking a strategy route that gives you some money now and lets you move on so you can avoid the time and emotional distress of the next steps of the tribunal process. If you think you could take some money and move on, definitely investigate this course as that's how the folk I mentioned earlier did it. However, if you choose not to and early conciliation closes with no deal you will then get a certificate from the ACAS advisor. This certificate is essential in the next step of making an ET claim. It’s essential because when you are completing the ET1 form online, which I am going to talk you through in a moment, you need to enter the early conciliation certificate reference number in this form. Normally you can’t proceed to an Employment tribunal without early conciliation, however, there are some exceptions.
The next step is to complete the ET1 form application, so just to make you aware, when you start early conciliation, the clock stops until you get that certificate, normally for the maximum time of 6 weeks, when the clock starts ticking again you are up against it to complete your form, so if you had 30 days left out of the 89 days when you submitted your early conciliation application, the clock starts ticking down again from 30 days so don’t miss out on submitting that form.
The form is relatively simple, however, given what you are doing and it might be your first time doing something so formal and you feel like you are in a legal process this can make you anxious about missing key parts out.