Written by Employment Tribunals · solicitor conduct · regulatory accountability
Employees who turn to Employment Tribunals for justice can find the scales tipped before a hearing begins. This article examines alleged sharp practice by some solicitors in employment disputes and asks whether the SRA has done enough to protect the public.
Publication snapshot
- The article argues that some employer-side litigation tactics can undermine access to justice in Employment Tribunals.
- It covers procedural abuse, strategic delay, NDA misuse, conflicts of interest and regulatory enforcement concerns.
- It criticises the SRA’s alleged failure to respond robustly to professional misconduct and sharp practice.
A systemic problem in Employment Tribunals
Employment Tribunals were created to offer an accessible forum for workplace justice. Yet in practice, some claimants say the system has become a minefield for ordinary workers.
The imbalance of power is stark. Employers often arrive with experienced legal teams, while many employees are unrepresented. That asymmetry can be exploited through technical procedure, legal jargon, late applications and tactical pressure.
Claims with merit can be derailed on technicalities where a claimant lacks the legal knowledge to resist. The result, critics argue, is a procedural version of justice in which those with the greater resources can secure tactical wins while the underlying workplace grievance remains unresolved.
Procedural abuse and legal gamesmanship
One alleged hallmark of unethical litigation practice is procedural abuse: exploiting the tribunal’s procedures and informality to ambush or overwhelm opponents.
This can begin from the moment a claim is filed. Legal teams may inundate claimants with technical demands or applications intended less to clarify the case than to trip them up. Strike-out applications, while legally permissible, can be used as strategic weapons to end a case before difficult evidence is fully explored.
Technical applications
Applications may focus on pleading defects, alleged lack of prospects or procedural default rather than the merits of the underlying complaint.
Document overload
Last-minute bundles, lengthy submissions and large volumes of material can exhaust or confuse an unrepresented claimant.
Intimidating advocacy
Legal jargon, rapid submissions and repeated procedural objections can make a litigant in person feel out of depth before the substance is reached.
The danger is that procedure becomes a weapon not for truth-finding, but for pressure.
Strategic delay tactics
Delay can be more than procrastination. In employment cases, it can become a calculated war of attrition.
Employer-side lawyers may seek extensions, adjournments or further procedural steps. Documents may be produced slowly or late. Each delay means more stress, more time, and often more cost for the claimant.
Why delay matters
Companies usually have deeper pockets and may be insured. Individual claimants may face financial pressure, health impact and evidential decay while the case drags on.
Who controls the evidence
Employment cases often depend on documents held by the employer: emails, HR records, investigation notes, messages, policies and internal communications.
By the time a claimant reaches a full hearing, they may have endured years of pressure. Some settle cheaply or abandon the claim altogether. That, critics argue, is sometimes the point.
Misuse of non-disclosure agreements
Perhaps the most contentious tool in this area is the non-disclosure agreement. Confidentiality clauses can have legitimate uses, but critics argue that they have also been used as gagging devices to silence workplace misconduct complaints.
In high-profile scandals from #MeToo onward, lawyers acting for powerful individuals and companies have drafted NDAs that buried allegations of harassment, discrimination and other wrongdoing.
The pattern is familiar: settlement is offered in exchange for silence, with legal consequences threatened if the employee speaks out. In the employment context, the NDA may become the final act of a corrupted process, where an exhausted claimant is told that signing is the only practical way out.
The SRA has issued warning notices about improper NDAs, but critics argue that enforcement has been too limited and too soft to change professional behaviour.
Conflicts of interest and collusion concerns
Another concern involves conflicts of interest: situations where a solicitor’s commercial or professional loyalties risk compromising the fairness owed to a client, opponent or the court.
In theory, professional rules prohibit acting where there is an improper conflict. In practice, critics say conflicts can arise in subtler forms.
Representation barriers
- Some firms may be reluctant to act against major employers because they want future work from those organisations.
- Victims may struggle to find representation where the alleged wrongdoer is powerful or well-connected.
- This can leave claimants unsupported against precisely the parties most able to defend aggressively.
Process conflicts
- Internal investigations, grievance processes and later tribunal defence may overlap in ways that raise independence concerns.
- Business relationships can create perceived or actual conflicts.
- Where conflicts are not policed, public confidence in the tribunal process erodes.
Each time a regulator dismisses a conflict complaint without meaningful engagement, the perception grows that connected lawyers and large firms operate by different rules.
The SRA accountability gap
The Solicitors Regulation Authority describes itself as protecting the public by enforcing professional standards. Critics argue that its record on solicitor misconduct, especially in contentious employment matters, is too weak.
The criticism is not that the SRA never acts. It is that action often appears slow, opaque, informal or insufficiently deterrent.
Limited consequences
NDA-related enforcement has often resulted in advice, warnings or rebukes rather than severe sanctions.
Big-firm concern
There is a continuing perception, noted in wider commentary and oversight material, that larger firms and powerful practitioners receive softer treatment than smaller actors.
Reactive rather than proactive
The SRA is often criticised for acting only after public pressure, scandal or external oversight rather than identifying misconduct early.
The Axiom Ince and SSB Law controversies have intensified scrutiny of the SRA’s supervision and enforcement model. The concern is systemic: whether the regulator is structurally capable of holding the profession to account when doing so is reputationally difficult.
Institutional enablers
The problem is not only individual bad actors. It is sustained by institutional incentives and weak deterrence.
Employment Tribunals are designed to be relatively informal and accessible, but they are not always equipped to punish sharp practice. Costs sanctions are rare. Judges manage heavy lists. Tactical misconduct can be difficult to identify in real time, especially where one side is legally represented and the other is not.
Within some firms and corporate legal departments, a culture can develop that prizes winning above ethical restraint. Junior lawyers may learn that securing strike-out, applying pressure or forcing silence through settlement is a professional success rather than a matter requiring caution.
The call for reform
For the tide to turn, systemic change is needed. Regulators must be willing to act against unethical conduct whether it is committed by a sole practitioner, a major firm or a prominent partner.
Regulatory reform
- Treat oppressive litigation tactics as professional conduct issues where they undermine justice.
- Prosecute serious misconduct publicly and consistently.
- Ensure NDA misuse carries consequences that deter repetition.
Tribunal reform
- Use case management powers more assertively against document dumps, delay and non-compliance.
- Protect litigants in person from avoidable procedural ambush.
- Make costs and conduct warnings meaningful where behaviour crosses the line.
Solicitors are officers of the court. They are duty-bound to uphold the law, not subvert it. Zealous advocacy is not a licence for dishonesty, undue aggression, cynical delay or abusive settlement pressure.
Sources
- Solicitors Journal – Costs awards and misconduct in Employment Tribunals.
- Legal Futures – Solicitor misled client about tribunal claim, including the Chukwudolue case.
- Legal Futures – SRA action, or alleged lack of action, on NDA misuse.
- Legal Futures – SSB Law scandal and SRA response.
- Legal Futures – Weinstein NDA case against A&O partner.
- Parliamentary written evidence – Misuse of NDAs in discrimination cases.
- Vishal Shah, LinkedIn – Common delay tactics by defence lawyers.
- Legal Services Board report, via Lexology – Criticism of SRA regulatory failures.
Legal disclaimer
This article is provided for general information and commentary only. It does not constitute legal advice, nor does it establish a solicitor-client relationship. Readers should seek independent, qualified legal counsel before acting on any points discussed. All factual references are drawn from publicly available sources; any errors or omissions are unintentional.
Excellent stuff – as a LIP this us exactly what I have come across since 2022, against an NHS trust – 2 dismissal letters 4 months apart etc etc
Abused at work, then by lawyers, then by judges 🤦♂️🥊✌
I am a L-I-P and despite my repeated applications to have The Respondent’s response Struck Out, the tribunal still allowing The Respondent to take part in proceedings, even though The Respondent’s actions are very serious and fraudulent. Been victimised at work because The Respondent can act with impunity.
25 forgeries including 18 cost forged entries the SRA will not investigate this case
Yes so have I and mine is against a local authority. Abuse if the little people and it should be stopped.
I was threatened consistently with strike out and costs. It is still going on, absolute rotten to the core even the judicial system which is supposedly there to help us.
Brilliant and a true reflection of the whole employment process. Unfit for purpose, and as stated weighs heavily in favour of the employer. 7 years on I still fighting, just to be allowed my case be presented. All the appropriate routes closed. A victim in work of sexual harassment, covered up and denied by my employer, concealment of documents make it fraud, a criminal offence and as it involved many other employees including solicitors it corruption with conspiracy, I have 4 years to bring a claim, sadly solicitors or barrister unaffordable, legal yes, but the most appropriate solicitors its not for then, claim worth hundreds of thousands, but justice the most Important, the pain and suffering must end.
As someone who just had the SRA not look into Lewis Silkin, even after a Tribunal wrote that there client, Peloton breached their duty of disclosure and had train to believe that they did not disclose all relevant document… and then I find out that Peloton allowed a Lewis Silkin para-legal to get work explained there..
The system is a joke.
99% of what is recorded here is true. I was a victim of unequivocal corruption both at the hands of defendant solicitors and ET Judge. I represented as a Lip. Now I’m left blindsided by a system no one cares little about accountability.
Yes, numerous PHs just a total waste of time. Four lever arch files packed to the brim with paperwork I haven’t even bothered looking at. Narrowing the scope of my hearings so I can barely speak. I have had the full force of a council bare down on me, I cannot even describe the malicious actions of my employer. They are so corrupt and I have the proof, yet the judge at the last PH refused to allow me to present my material evidence or discuss detriments in a whistleblowing case. Refused, I just couldn’t believe that a judge could be so blatantly biased and protect an employer who is also financially abusing vulnerable people. I had the evidence but she refused to look at it. The fight goes on but I anticipate it will get much worse because I have had to put in a complaint against the presiding judge, so I will imagine it will be all down hill from here.
II want to express my sincere gratitude for this article—it is simply outstanding. It’s highly technical yet remarkably clear, and I personally lived everything you describe.
A few years ago I brought a case to an Employment Tribunal with self representation and no knowledge in law or legal matters. It was traumatic and devastating. I am not English, and I was appalled—shocked and disgusted—by the superficiality and the level of corruption I encountered, both among some solicitors and, in my view, within the tribunal system itself. I was treated by a judge in a shameful manner when I raised a health-related issue: I felt insulted, denigrated, and, in the final decision, the judge highlighted details that were completely unnecessary and seemed designed to embarrass me and damage my reputation.
After being repeatedly pressed to “settle” and pursue mediation—and while facing serious family issues—I eventually had to accept, because after a year and a half I simply couldn’t keep going. But the reputational damage has been incalculable. I lost my chance to work in the UK. I have since moved abroad and will never again work in England in the role I held, despite many years of experience, numerous qualifications, and two degrees.
What shocked me most is that when new employers after interviews were searched my own full name on Google—for routine reputation checks—my full name appeared linked to the tribunal decision, even though in the official judgment it only showed my surname and the initial of my first name with a dot. By contrast, the respondents’ full names do not appear at all. This means that a deliberate step must have been taken to make my identity traceable—singling me out in a way that feels punitive. Even more disturbingly, this only started happening after I signed the agreement, which gives me further reason to believe it was done intentionally, as a form of retaliation.
I am disgusted and horrified—but also deeply grateful to you for shining a light on this. This is one of the best pieces I have ever read about the appalling state of the system in England.
Please keep going—your work is vitally important.
Thank You!
X
SRA is on the wrong side of the drag curve, as we say in aviation! The side where they’re so ineffective and so behind in sorting cases, spotting corruption and malpractice, that there’s far less deterrent effect that should be the case. That’s serious. I have a case that is full of malpractice and law breaking by lawyers (solicitors and barristers and even judges) yet SRA and the other entities overseeing the profession have triaged it into oblivion, for some reason. So a load more lawyers have ‘got away with it’. I had similar at an employment tribunal once where i was trying to stand up for my right to flexible working but I faced lies and deceit and tactics. But it is right across the litigation piste that the tactics are deployed, There is little chance of anyone disciplining the solicitors and they know it. They’re laughing at the system and this has always been he case; it’s just the world has moved on and in most other sectors they have feedback and investigations and a proper closed-loop system whereas the legal world is still open-loop – ‘fire and forget’! So forget complaining, they can’t be bothered to listen let alone do anything about it.
Glad I found this article while typing “Respondent abusing the law” into Google. I’m currently going through this situation and drafting a letter to the tribunal as I type this comment. Everything written here is just what I am bringing to the tribunal’s attention, to at least show all sides that I am not an idiot who will be swayed by their sleazy corruption. In the absence of true watchdogs, we all must be our own watchdogs and push back, even if that means not complying with certain “ET orders” issued after the Respondent successfully vacillated the ET/Judge.
I am Polish, I worked every Friday 7hours with 10 minute work. It was union pay deal that make us do so. My solicitor logged this claim under discrimination rather than WTR1998, there is only one law that talk about break at work. Tribunal has rejected this claim , even that I had WTR1998 complaint in the WS Judge on FH wrote that I did not have…Appeal was not on this ground as direct access have different plan. My WS 55 pages with all the details, respondent 9 pages over 3 witnesses. According to Judge I am not credible as I did not produce any notes, I did not have any, my WS was written on daily basis. Direct comparator did not count as he started earlier. I wont stop fighting, this is only thing I can do.