Chicago Employment Litigation Lawyer David Porter Home
Keep in mind that the Judge will frequently have hearings scheduled every half hour - so you will need to be organized, succinct, and to the point
- Your hearing generally will last for approximately 25-45 minutes, depending on the number of witnesses who are to testify and the issues.
- Your hearing is not the highlight of the judge's day, but just another hearing that day, and generally unless things are going terribly wrong (for either you or the Employer) the hearing should not last more than 45 minutes to 1 hour.
- Be succinct and to the point in your testimony - but by all means attempt get out the relevant facts during the hearing (to the extent that you are reasonably able to do so without overly ticking off the judge).
- While you may believe that the Employer's claimed reason for terminating your employment is not the real reason, my experience is that due to the time constraints of the hearing you generally will not be able to prove this - so it is usually better to address the Employer's allegations of misconduct head-on rather than appear to the judge to be avoiding this issue by focusing on other events and other issues (such as discrimination, retaliation, etc.).
