It happens quite often when you are representing an employee at a WRC hearing that the employer, who is your opponent, is represented by one of the leading law firms in the State.
Call them ‘top 5’ or ‘top 10’ or give them a less complimentary designation such as ‘big swinging dick firms’, it is easy to be intimidated and to question your case, yourself, and your client.
Invariably the big firm will have instructed counsel, an expert employment law barrister. Now you are beginning to grow a little concerned and less confident about your client’s case.
And then the submission comes into us from the other side and the submission itself is twenty-five to fifty pages long and the appendices run to two hundred and fifty pages of case law, statute, findings, decisions, and so on.
It is easy to buckle and be intimidated. Perhaps that’s the reason for the enormous submission.
But when the facts are on your side, and you look at them again and convince yourself that, yes, indeed, they are on your side, then you need to stay cool.
Then you need to hold your nerve.
Grow a pair.
Because if the facts are on your client’s side, no decided case or behemoth of a submission or top 5 firm or leading employment law barrister can change those facts.
Trust yourself, rely on the facts.
And hold your nerve.