If you have been fired from your job after you have been discriminated against, you should hire an employment lawyer right away. Discrimination at your workplace is when you are discriminated against at a protected characteristic that you might have, such as your race, age, gender, marital status, etc.
The question is, what happens after you have hired an employment lawyer?
Fact-Finding Process
After you have hired an employment lawyer, the first thing that the attorney will do is to learn all the facts about your case. This aspect is also known as extensive fact-finding. Understandably, the facts of your case are incredibly important. So, your lawyer needs to know all of your facts.
To find facts, the lawyer might verbally go over your story multiple times. While they are at it, they might take extensive notes. There is a great probability that your lawyer might ask you to write you a timeline of events. So, you will be sitting down and writing a letter that describes exactly what happened and when it happened.
This can include the good facts of the case as well as the bad facts and everything in between.
Collect Crucial Documents
Additionally to your story regarding what happened and when it happened, the lawyer will also collect all relevant documents, including the following:
- Emails
- Text messages
- The company handbook
- The company policies and procedures
- Company Articles
- Social media posts
- Company audio recordings
- Company video recordings
The lawyer might as well collect anything else that might possibly be relevant to the case – whether it is good or bad.
Pre-Litigation Demand
Now, when it comes to a pre-litigation demand, it means that you have hired a lawyer, and the lawyer has gathered most of the facts and documents. In most cases, what happens next is that the lawyer might send a letter to the company. You should know that, at this point, the case has not been filed in court yet, but you are telling the company that they will get sued.
Your attorney will also tell the company what they will get sued for, and if they want to prevent that lawsuit from happening, they will need to settle the case.
However, depending on your attorney’s judgment, they might as well proceed to file a lawsuit and show the company that they are serious while getting the required documents and testimony from them. Simultaneously, the lawyer will also put some financial pressure on the company that can get you a better result.
Fila A Court Case
Now, if your attorney doesn’t send a demand letter or the case fails to settle early on, your lawyer’s next step will be to file the case in court. Your lawyer will do this by drafting a complaint, which is a document that initiates your case in court. You might want to review this document, but you certainly won’t have to do anything about drafting it.
So, after the complaint has been filed with the court, your lawyer will then proceed to hire someone to serve the lawsuit on the company, which means physically delivering the lawsuit to the company.
Once the case is filed successfully, you become the plaintiff, and your company becomes the defendant.
Deadline for Responding
Typically, your company has about four weeks to respond to your lawsuit. However, this deadline is frequently extended, so you shouldn’t be surprised if it takes up to two months for them to respond to the lawsuit.
Motion to Strike
After your lawyer files the lawsuit, your company’s lawyer will file a document, which is known as a “motion to strike.” This document is a formal request that asks the judge to do something. This document sets early motions into place, which are essentially early efforts to throw out and diminish your entire case or a part of your case.
You have virtually nothing to do with this step in the case. It is simply lawyers bickering over the law. There is also a subsequent court hearing, but you are not supposed to attend that initial court hearing, so you leave it better off to your attorney.
It is incredibly important to hire a good lawyer, such as the employment lawyer Las Vegas, if you live in Las Vegas and have an employment case. Why, you might ask? Well, if you have a good lawyer and a good case, these early motions from the defense attorney are usually denied. If they are granted sometimes – your lawyer can still amend the case to keep it alive. But you won’t have to sweat this part of the case; you can let your lawyer handle things on their end.
Written Discovery
In a discrimination case, the lawyers on both sides are going to proceed with the next part of the lawsuit, which is discovery. Written discovery is a fancy phrase that means that both sides are exchanging information. Written discovery is necessary for the judicial process to work and to assist both suing parties in facilitating settlement.
Types of Written Discovery
There are a few different types of written discovery.
Request for Production of Documents
This is where your lawyer sends a written demand to the other side demanding certain documents.
Interrogatories
This is where your attorney sends a written list of questions to the other side. Those questions need to be answered under oath.
Request for Admission
This is where your lawyer sends written requests that the other side needs to either admit or deny. Now, this might seem pretty straightforward, but you should know that discovery goes both ways. The company is going to send you all these written requests as well. You will have to help your lawyer in answering these written requests.
Understandably, this can be an uncomfortable process as they can ask questions or request certain documents that you certainly don’t want them to know.
They can ask for all sorts of things that are relevant to the lawsuit, such as handwritten notes, documents, emails, text messages, and whatnot. In certain situations, your lawyer can block certain requests and keep certain documents out of trial – but it depends on the type of case you have and the subsequent law.
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