Five Tips For Healthy Litigation Mindset In Employment Cases
Employment litigation can be an emotionally taxing process. Below are a five simple but very important tips to help you handle your case while maintaining emotional health and mental strength:
1. Be patient. Realize that this process takes time. Courts and other agencies handle many cases at the same time and so do lawyers. Your case might take a year or two or even longer from start to end. This is normal. The good news is that everyone's turn comes and you will have the opportunity to try to settle your case or present your case for adjudication, whether you end up winning or losing. There will be times when your case will be dormant for months. This is normal, and most often there is nothing you can or should be doing to speed up the process. The defendant might strategically try to delay the process in an attempt to frustrate you and make you lose hope in your case, but you must not allow this to happen. If you follow tip no. 3 below, this should make waiting for your time in court much easier.
2. Don't take your case personally. This is easier said than done, but you must treat your case as business only. If you treat is as some type of war against your employer/employee, and if your case causes a great deal of anxiety that you simply cannot control, then you should ask yourself whether your case is worth pursuing and whether you can handle the stress associated with the process, as no case is worth having a stroke or a heart attack over. Your case is not about justice or fairness, as your employer will likely never apologize to you and will never admit that they are wrong and you are right. You must remember that the only remedy available in an employment case is monetary compensation. Therefore, you must treat it as business. What helps many of our clients is keeping in mind that this is not a criminal case, and the steaks are relatively moderate, i.e. you don't have that much to lose and no one will end up going to jail and serving time, no matter what happens in your case. This is about getting more or less compensation for the damages suffered by you as a result of any discrimination or wrongful termination that you have been subjected to. Once you put your case in perspective this should help you overcome much of then anxiety associated with the process.
3. Get busy and don't make your case the center of your life. Obsessing over your case, spending hours researching the law, writing long letters and rebuttals are a waste of time more often than not. If you have already hired an attorney to represent you, you should let him/her do the work, and you should focus on your present and future life and career. This means looking for new job opportunities as aggressively as possible and taking care of other areas of your life, and not allowing the bad acts of your former employer stop you from achieving your full potential in the present / future. When you have something useful to share that relates to your case, bring it to your attorney's attention. And when your attorney has updates for you on your case, he will contact you.
4. Don't let the other side's arguments destabilize you emotionally. There are almost always two sides to an employment case. You will make your arguments, and the employer will make their arguments. However outrageous and untruthful the employer's claims and defenses might be, you must not let it anger you and destabilize you. This is just a typical part of the process. You can't expect an employer to come out and say "we are wrong, you are right, here is the money." An employer always has arguments to defend themselves. When you hear things from your employer that are not true, you should approach those arguments strategically and think about how you are going to disprove those argument with documents, witness statements or other evidence, in order to make your case stronger.
5. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. I meet at least 1-2 people every month who spend so much time moving their case in the wrong direction or gather evidence that has no relevance to proving their case, or pursuing a case that's simply not worth pursuing. Often, they miss important deadlines that make the case much harder or even impossible to pursue. I believe that every employee who is planning to file a wrongful termination case should have a detailed consultation with at least one attorney to evaluate the case, have basic questions about the process answered and also determine what the best course of action is. Any consultation fee charged is money well spent considering how much time and wasted effort it will likely save you along the way.
6. Be nice to your lawyer. As strong as you might think your case is, be sure that the other sides most likely doesn't think so and they are ready to make arguments to defend their actions and their position. Your lawyers job is not easy. He will have to argue on your behalf, face various motions that he will have to oppose and do other challenging work. Your lawyer likely handles dozens or more cases at the same time. Be mindful of this. Litigation process is often lengthy one. There are often periods when nothing is going on in your case for months and there is nothing you can or should be doing to speed things up. You don't need to follow up with your attorney and seek updates every few days or even every week. A monthly e-mail could be appropriate however. Don't expect your attorney to be perfect. He is human. He will sometimes forget certain things about your case, and he will make typos in documents. The good news is that no case is won or lost because of a typo, but you can certainly help your case and your attorney by volunteering to review important documents before they are filed or served on the opposing side.
7. Don't be "that" client. This type of client is every attorney's nightmare, and who every lawyer tries to avoid as much as possible. This is the client who is entitled and how believes that the world should stop for his case. He has unrealistic expectations from everyone, including his attorney, the courts and everyone involved. No one and nothing is good enough in his view. He has an exaggerated sense of his damages, and he is unable to keep things in perspective. To him, his case is a matter of life and death. He blames everyone around for all the things that happened to him and refuses to recognize potential weaknesses in his case, (every case has strengths and weaknesses). This is the same client who spends an inordinate amount of time researching the law and comes to conclusion that he knows more about the law than his attorney, just because he read a few cases online and looked up a few laws. Attorneys try to avoid this type of client like the plague. When they end up representing something like this because they couldn't quite tell initially that they have encountered "that" type of client and weed him out, they will withdraw from representation in a hurry. And the best attorneys out there are also the pickiest. They have more work than they can handle and they have no desire to represent someone who they don't like personally and who they do not get along. So, don't be "that" client, but be the type of client that everyone wants to represent and help.
Many people are looking for a lawyer who is going to immediately tell them that they have a great case and who will tell them what they want to hear. Watch the video below that talks about why reviewing your case with a lawyer who appears to be skeptical and who asks you difficult questions that poke holes in your case is a good and essential step before pursuing your case:
1. Be patient. Realize that this process takes time. Courts and other agencies handle many cases at the same time and so do lawyers. Your case might take a year or two or even longer from start to end. This is normal. The good news is that everyone's turn comes and you will have the opportunity to try to settle your case or present your case for adjudication, whether you end up winning or losing. There will be times when your case will be dormant for months. This is normal, and most often there is nothing you can or should be doing to speed up the process. The defendant might strategically try to delay the process in an attempt to frustrate you and make you lose hope in your case, but you must not allow this to happen. If you follow tip no. 3 below, this should make waiting for your time in court much easier.
2. Don't take your case personally. This is easier said than done, but you must treat your case as business only. If you treat is as some type of war against your employer/employee, and if your case causes a great deal of anxiety that you simply cannot control, then you should ask yourself whether your case is worth pursuing and whether you can handle the stress associated with the process, as no case is worth having a stroke or a heart attack over. Your case is not about justice or fairness, as your employer will likely never apologize to you and will never admit that they are wrong and you are right. You must remember that the only remedy available in an employment case is monetary compensation. Therefore, you must treat it as business. What helps many of our clients is keeping in mind that this is not a criminal case, and the steaks are relatively moderate, i.e. you don't have that much to lose and no one will end up going to jail and serving time, no matter what happens in your case. This is about getting more or less compensation for the damages suffered by you as a result of any discrimination or wrongful termination that you have been subjected to. Once you put your case in perspective this should help you overcome much of then anxiety associated with the process.
3. Get busy and don't make your case the center of your life. Obsessing over your case, spending hours researching the law, writing long letters and rebuttals are a waste of time more often than not. If you have already hired an attorney to represent you, you should let him/her do the work, and you should focus on your present and future life and career. This means looking for new job opportunities as aggressively as possible and taking care of other areas of your life, and not allowing the bad acts of your former employer stop you from achieving your full potential in the present / future. When you have something useful to share that relates to your case, bring it to your attorney's attention. And when your attorney has updates for you on your case, he will contact you.
4. Don't let the other side's arguments destabilize you emotionally. There are almost always two sides to an employment case. You will make your arguments, and the employer will make their arguments. However outrageous and untruthful the employer's claims and defenses might be, you must not let it anger you and destabilize you. This is just a typical part of the process. You can't expect an employer to come out and say "we are wrong, you are right, here is the money." An employer always has arguments to defend themselves. When you hear things from your employer that are not true, you should approach those arguments strategically and think about how you are going to disprove those argument with documents, witness statements or other evidence, in order to make your case stronger.
5. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. I meet at least 1-2 people every month who spend so much time moving their case in the wrong direction or gather evidence that has no relevance to proving their case, or pursuing a case that's simply not worth pursuing. Often, they miss important deadlines that make the case much harder or even impossible to pursue. I believe that every employee who is planning to file a wrongful termination case should have a detailed consultation with at least one attorney to evaluate the case, have basic questions about the process answered and also determine what the best course of action is. Any consultation fee charged is money well spent considering how much time and wasted effort it will likely save you along the way.
6. Be nice to your lawyer. As strong as you might think your case is, be sure that the other sides most likely doesn't think so and they are ready to make arguments to defend their actions and their position. Your lawyers job is not easy. He will have to argue on your behalf, face various motions that he will have to oppose and do other challenging work. Your lawyer likely handles dozens or more cases at the same time. Be mindful of this. Litigation process is often lengthy one. There are often periods when nothing is going on in your case for months and there is nothing you can or should be doing to speed things up. You don't need to follow up with your attorney and seek updates every few days or even every week. A monthly e-mail could be appropriate however. Don't expect your attorney to be perfect. He is human. He will sometimes forget certain things about your case, and he will make typos in documents. The good news is that no case is won or lost because of a typo, but you can certainly help your case and your attorney by volunteering to review important documents before they are filed or served on the opposing side.
7. Don't be "that" client. This type of client is every attorney's nightmare, and who every lawyer tries to avoid as much as possible. This is the client who is entitled and how believes that the world should stop for his case. He has unrealistic expectations from everyone, including his attorney, the courts and everyone involved. No one and nothing is good enough in his view. He has an exaggerated sense of his damages, and he is unable to keep things in perspective. To him, his case is a matter of life and death. He blames everyone around for all the things that happened to him and refuses to recognize potential weaknesses in his case, (every case has strengths and weaknesses). This is the same client who spends an inordinate amount of time researching the law and comes to conclusion that he knows more about the law than his attorney, just because he read a few cases online and looked up a few laws. Attorneys try to avoid this type of client like the plague. When they end up representing something like this because they couldn't quite tell initially that they have encountered "that" type of client and weed him out, they will withdraw from representation in a hurry. And the best attorneys out there are also the pickiest. They have more work than they can handle and they have no desire to represent someone who they don't like personally and who they do not get along. So, don't be "that" client, but be the type of client that everyone wants to represent and help.
Many people are looking for a lawyer who is going to immediately tell them that they have a great case and who will tell them what they want to hear. Watch the video below that talks about why reviewing your case with a lawyer who appears to be skeptical and who asks you difficult questions that poke holes in your case is a good and essential step before pursuing your case: