May Chiu
“Our witnesses were based in three different continents”
Key Facts
Now in third seat in ICM
Joined A&O
September 2007
I'm currently sitting in Employment & Benefits. The department is fantastically welcoming and it did not take long for me to feel a part of it. For the first three months I sat in the Employment team.
At any given time the Employment team will be handling a range of advisory and corporate work, as well as a number of High Court and employment tribunal matters. I got involved with defending one of its biggest investment banking clients against a claim of unfair dismissal. The claim was for over £15 million in damages. From the beginning, I was encouraged to get stuck into every aspect of our defence, from drafting witness statements and producing the trial bundle, to preparing for case management discussions and corresponding with the Tribunal. Our witnesses were based in three different continents, and the documents disclosed by the two sides ran to over 1,600 entries, filling 20 lever arch files. In addition, since the two associates whom I sat with were job sharers who each worked three days a week, I learned a great deal from sitting with two different trainers.
The pace of our preparations really picked up as the weeks passed: I went to the Tribunal five times and would be on the phone to our client and our barristers every day. There were some truly gratifying moments, such as when our team convinced the Employment Judge to turn down the other side's application for a witness order, and when that same Employment Judge said that he wished to show A&O's bundles to future litigants as a model for how bundles ought to be prepared!
About thirty-six hours before the hearing was due to begin, our client and the claimant were in the middle of without prejudice discussions at our office when a fire alarm went off and we all had to be evacuated. An associate and I then found ourselves in the bizarre scenario of trooping across Spitalfields on a Saturday evening with our client and the claimant in tow, looking for a cafe in which to finalise the negotiations! The claimant did, finally, accept a without prejudice offer, which was a very satisfying result for our client.