At a glance
Litigant in person, Neil, worked for a small charitable trust in a rural Scottish community for 10 years.
Claims brought: constructive unfair dismissal, unlawful deduction of wages, breach of contract, and working time regulations.
Outcome: Neil won on constructive unfair dismissal and unlawful deduction of wages, representing himself throughout, with a remedy hearing still to follow.
Support: guided by Valla, including coaching from Valla's Anna Berry, use of templates, Valla timeline feature and hearing support.
A decade of quiet commitment
Neil spent ten years working for a charitable trust serving a small rural community in Scotland. For most of that time, pay was never really the point. He cared about the organisation and the people it served, and he put in far more than his contracted hours without a second thought.
That changed after a change of trustees on the board. Neil began to notice a marked inequality: a newly appointed member of staff was being paid substantially more for part-time work, while Neil's own responsibilities kept growing. He raised the issue through an informal grievance and was promised a pay rise in response. It never came. Not that year, nor the next, or the year after that. Over three years, his effective pay eroded to the point where it was due to fall below the National Minimum Wage.
Neil's final straw
After submitting a formal grievance in March 2025 that went nowhere, Neil turned to Acas Early Conciliation, but his employer didn’t want to engage. Eventually, Neil resigned and in July 2025, lodged an Employment Tribunal claim. He brought four claims at the outset: constructive unfair dismissal, unlawful deduction of wages, breach of contract, and a working time regulations claim.
Neil chose to represent himself rather than instruct a solicitor. His reasoning was practical as much as it was personal:
“I’ve used lawyers in the past, and understandably, unless you can afford to pay, they can’t give you full focus. They can give you their full focus when you’re dealing with them, but then they move on to other clients and I have confidence in myself and no one knows the picture better than I do”.
He also brought genuine strengths to the table: confidence in the facts of his own case and years of prior business leadership experience that gave him a working familiarity with contracts, correspondence, and process.
Building his case
Rather than treat self-representation as a leap of faith, Neil approached it methodically. His preparation included:
- Following Acas's Early Conciliation procedure to the letter, rather than treating it as a box-ticking exercise.
- Submitting a Data Subject Access Request to obtain his full employment records from the charitable trust.
- Archiving and documenting years of email correspondence so nothing relevant could be lost or overlooked.
- Preserving text messages and other mobile evidence before it could be deleted or lost.
- Working with legal expert Anna Berry, his legal expert at Valla, to pressure-test his claims and keep his written and oral evidence focused and credible.
That coaching relationship shaped two of the most important decisions Neil made. The first was learning to separate what felt morally wrong from what a Tribunal could actually act on: strong feelings of unfairness only carry weight in law when the evidence fits a recognised legal test.
The second was resisting the temptation to spread himself thin across four claims. With Anna's guidance, Neil concentrated his strongest evidence on constructive unfair dismissal and unlawful deduction of wages, the claims he ultimately won, while using the others more strategically rather than pursuing all four with equal force.
Rewriting the “underdog” story
One of Neil's clearest insights challenges a common assumption among people considering self-representation: that a litigant in person is automatically at a procedural disadvantage against an employer with lawyers.
“You are not the underdog going into this, as far as the court system is concerned.”
Employment tribunals apply an “overriding objective” to deal with cases fairly, and Neil found that this cuts both ways. Tribunals will often accommodate delays or missed deadlines from either side in the interests of a fair hearing, not just from the represented party. Understanding this helped him walk into the hearing room without assuming the system was stacked against him.
Don’t assume the respondent will play fair
One caution Neil is keen to pass on: don't assume the Respondent will play fair, however cooperative or reasonable they may appear. In his own case, more than 70 of his documents were left out of what was supposed to be a Joint Bundle, forcing him to compile and print a Supplementary Bundle at speed with the first day of the hearing bearing down on him. His advice is to hold onto a healthy scepticism throughout preparation. Check every bundle and document exchange yourself, rather than being reassured by any appearance of "fairness" or "assistance" the Respondent or their representatives may offer.
Where it all nearly went wrong
Neil is candid about the parts of the process that were genuinely hard, and the mistakes worth learning from.
- He worked until 3:30am the night before his final hearing day preparing submissions, and hit a wall. He found himself unable to put together a coherent final submission without help from the tribunal itself. His advice to others: protect your rest before the moments that matter most, rather than trying to out-work exhaustion.
- He brought his son to the hearing to take notes, which he describes as crucial. It meant Neil could give his full attention to examination and cross-examination instead of splitting his focus with note-taking. If you don’t have someone you can bring to your hearings, a Valla legal expert can support you.
- He had been told by Citizens Advice that settlement was likely. It wasn't, and Neil urges others not to assume a case will resolve early. He describes the process instead as “a war of attrition”, one that rewards patience and preparation over optimism.
- He didn't shy away from the emotional weight of the process. Neil describes breaking down in the hearing room when the impact on his family became real to him in the moment, and treats that as a normal part of the experience, not a failure of composure. He also had to consciously manage his reactions when the other side's approach felt designed to provoke him, choosing professionalism and courtesy instead.
The outcome
Neil won on two of his four claims, constructive unfair dismissal and unlawful deduction of wages. The remedy hearing is still to come to determine final figures.
It's a result built on unglamorous groundwork: methodical evidence-gathering, a willingness to take coaching and narrow his focus rather than fight every point at once, and the discipline to keep his composure under pressure even when it cost him emotionally.
Neil's advice to others considering self-representation
- Start with honest self-reflection. Look clearly at whether you contributed to the situation before you build your case around it.
- Watch real tribunal hearings before your own. Real case decisions are available via Gov.uk, you can also sign up to watch final hearings online at Courtserve, and reading published judgments will show you how the questioning actually flows.
- Research the specific venue in advance, so the physical setting isn't one more unknown on the day.
- Prepare your cross-examination questions, but stay flexible. Be ready to adapt based on what a witness actually says.
- Document your efforts to find new work as soon as you can. Mitigation evidence like this can directly affect what a tribunal awards at remedy.
- Bring someone to take notes, with the tribunals permission, so you can stay focused on the hearing itself (a Valla legal expert can do this for you)
- Protect your rest before key hearing days. Exhaustion hinders exactly the clarity you need most.
- Don’t let your emotions rule you when you’re in your hearing. Don’t get angry, because the other side is there to push your buttons. Be clear, professional and courteous.
Above all, Neil's message to anyone weighing up whether to bring their own case is this:
“You have to dig deep. It's frustrating, it's difficult, but if you believe you're in the right, do your research, and use the support that's out there. You can do this.”
How Valla supported Neil in his journey
Throughout the process, Neil drew on Valla's support for litigants in person, including:
- Free templates, including for Data Subject Access Requests.
- A dashboard to keep his case organised chronologically as evidence and correspondence accumulated.
- Coaching from one of our real legal experts to help him filter emotion from his evidence, sharpen his strongest claims, clarify terms and processes, and hold his strategy steady under pressure.
- Webinars on cross-examination and other tribunal skills.
“Valla is great”
Neil shared his success story to other litigants in person in a webinar hosted by Valla. He shared how he had engaged with Valla legal expert, Anna, “who is absolutely wonderful," and later describes Anna and Valla as "brilliant" for how she helped him talk through and filter his case, taking "the emotive part out" while keeping "a clinical side" to the analysis.
Practically, Neil endorses specific Valla tools as genuinely useful to his case: the dashboard ("you go to the dashboard in Valla and you start putting in as much information as you can") and the free Data Subject Access Request template with its accompanying video course.
Neil's story is a reminder that winning a tribunal case as a litigant in person rarely comes down to just a single moment of confidence. It comes from steady preparation, honest and trustworthy coaching, and the willingness to keep going through a process that is, by his own account, frustrating and difficult, that makes it worthwhile.
This case study is based on Neil's account of his tribunal journey, shared in a Valla webinar. Some details have been generalised to protect confidentiality.