Questions about “Bundles” for Employment Tribunals

[Seemslikeaniceday]

Following on from a number of threads about Employment Tribunals and legal proceedings I have a number of technical questions about the bundles of papers that are provided by the respondent:

1. Is is always the respondents responsibility to produce the bundles?
2. Are bundles produced for all types of legal cases e.g. tribunals, civil and criminal courts etc.?
3. Who is responsible for physically producing the bundles including the Index?
4. Who is responsible for ensuring the bundles are correctly Indexed?
5. Who is ultimately accountable for ensuring the bundles are correctly produced I.e. the respondent, lead counsel, junior counsel etc?

Thank you

Yes,I'd be interested to learn more about this too.

1. Almost always. The tribunal takes the view the respondents will have more resources, including being more likely to have solicitors, so the standard position is the respondent prepares the bundle.
2. No, bundles are an employment tribunal thing. Different types of courts take different approaches to how to refer to documents.

3 + 4 - the respondent. This part of preparing a bundle.

1. The respondent/their solicitors. Very few employment tribunal cases will have counsel.

For 3 +4 meant to say this is part of preparing a bundle

As above. Bundle is usually done by the Respondent’s solicitor.

It isn’t always possible to have a wonderful bundle. Often a claimant in person will insist on including irrelevant documents and the new directions given to assist remote hearings mean that in order to make the online page numbering match the physical page numbering, additional docs go at the end. This means the bundle is no longer in chronological order. We used to add them with letters eg p188a, p288b

What onlookers (and parties) often don’t realise is that the judges don’t read the bundles. They only read the pleadings and statements and then any document they are directed to in the bundle during the hearing (or specifically referenced in the statement).

Thank you for your responses I know it was quite a broad question.

My specific question is about the bundle in the Allison Bailey case. There were two respondents GCC and Stonewall. Were the two KC jointly accountable for the joint bundle or GCC & Stonewall as the respondents?

Thank you

The solicitors for one or other of the respondents will have been responsible for the bundle. Not the QCs

@Dannexe Thank you

bundles are used in most civil proceedings if there is going to be any sort of evidential hearing is required. It is usually the claimant who is tasked with preparing and lodging it but it can vary. Obviously in the ET the burden is placed on the employer.

I prepared many bundles as a trainee - the idea that senior counsel would concern themselves with such mundane things is quite entertaining!

Stonewall was the first respondent. Its solicitors are likely to have prepared the bundle. The bundle is heavily criticised in the judgment.

I deal with civil proceedings outside the employment tribunal.

All courts I have dealt with have referred to the documents as "the bundle".

As said above, in most cases it is the claimant who is responsible for preparing it. The usual process is that the claimant's solicitor prepares a draft index of the documents they think should be before the court. They will run this past their client (if they are the hands on type) and the barrister to check they have included everything that should be in there. They they send it to other parties to see if they have anything to add. Once the index is agreed someone in the claimant's team - usually a trainee or paralegal - will be responsible for producing the hard and soft copies needed. It should ideally be checked by someone more senior but in reality there isn't always time.

This isn’t the case in the employment tribunal though. It’s very rare for the claimants solicitor to be asked to produce the bundle. The only time it might happen is if you had a large law firm acting for the claimant and a respondent acting for itself but even then it would be the topic of some discussion at case management stage since this would massively increase the claimants legal costs and costs don’t follow the event in the employment tribunal.

This is the reason for my questions as it really impacted on the hearing.
I was interested in whether there is a distinction between accountable and responsible.

For example in this case was Stonewall accountable and the Solicitor responsible? Or was the KC accountable and solicitor responsible? However, from what has been said the solicitor was bout accountable and responsible.

Thanks everyone.

It may be

i don’t think the distinction between your terminology “accountable” and “responsible” exists in the way you think it does.

Whoever managed the bundle did a poor job. Whoever is standing before the judge is the one who incurs their wrath. That’s part of the job. The claim against Stonewall was dismissed. Aggravated damages were awarded against the other respondents (although only at a token level since mitigation was put forward).

Generally agree with @Hakunamatata91 regarding employment tribunal cases, but answer 2 is wrong. Bundles are not just an employment tribunal thing. They are used for all civil cases unless the court orders otherwise.

Thank you for answering. So in this situation the KC is accountable I.e.they were not responsible for preparing the bundle but they are being held to account by the judge for the bundle.

I assume the KC will not be happy and (go apeshit) ask what happened. Someone will be tasked with checking what happened and to put a process in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The KC will not go apeshit. They are used to dealing with rubbish bundles. It’s part of the job. They will have known the bundle was poorly prepared months before the hearing and they will have been working with it in preparing for the heating. Some judges get more cross about admin than others.

*hearing

Remember barristers want repeat work from solicitors. They do not typically go around getting cross with them since then they won’t be instructed again.

Sorry for my incorrect assumption about a barristers response.

No need to apologise, I was just trying to explain. People often assume the barrister is “the boss”. It doesn’t work like that.

I'm aware it's different in the employment tribunal. That is why I specified in the first line that I was talking about bundles in civil cases other than employment tribunals. One of the posts above mine suggested bundles might not be used in other courts. Plus, the OPs questions were also about bundles more generally.

OP the barrister won't need to go apeshit. The seniors on the team of solicitors will have been sitting their squirming and will have words with whoever on their team was responsible for the shambles. On the day the tribunal might direct criticism of the bundle to the barrister as he or she is the mouthpiece and it's never a comfortable position but most judges are former barristers and will know it is never the KC who puts the bundle together.

I learned early on in my legal career the importance of getting bundles right. I was a pupil barrister following my pupil master to a county court somewhere. The bundle was a shambles. The judge was very, very unimpressed. He told our side to get it sorted by lunchtime or he was dismissing the case (letting the other side win) and awarding costs against our side... It wasn't my job to fix it but it was all hands to the pump and I ended up in a newsagents on the high street that had a copier for 2p a page (remember those?) trying to fix it. We managed it and the case went ahead. That was more than 20 years ago but it was a good lesson in getting the documents right.

Also, a friend of mine was on the team for the brexit Supreme Court case that had many bundle fuck ups. He got a lot of piss taking emails about that. How embarrassing to have it televised...

I have found the whole process interesting, hence my questions.

The way Barristers work and the relationships with solicitors is different to what I am used to in my line of work.

@eurochick thanks, I think my question should have been who would be squirming. 😂