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right guys so it's alex woods flogging on a rather or tundle Monday morning I'm a civil litigator I'm producing a series of having producing a series of YouTube videos now for a couple of years on general litigation and I've been focusing more recently on specifically on the small claims track in the UK the UK county court system small claims track and this is a vlog that I think it's going to help people deal with the issue of witness statements now I think the first thing that I need to say is it witness statements are evidence okay your pleadings ie your claim form your defense of your the defendant the counterclaim if you're the defendant the reply to the defence if you're the claimant the defense to be a counterclaim you if you're the claimant faced with the counterclaim whatever it is these are the pleadings they state the story watch the other vlog on that issue they don't furnish the court with evidence so please please please please please don't be bombard in the call at the beginning of a claim we're just bringing a claim with a load of evidence okay that is for later litigation is a process with stages that's broken down see the cpr rules and you don't provide evidence at the beginning of the case you just set out the story chronologically the bare skeleton of your claim against your opponent or defense against the claimant all right evidence is can't just be produced out of thin air and trucked at the court it has to be accompanied by witness statement it has to be produced by a witness so this is where the witness statement stage comes in and it's usually a lot later than well nearly always is a lot later than the pleadings and it's also a lot later than disclosure of the evidence you then drown the track in general litigation actually attach produced a witness statement which which produces the evidence but in this claims track there's usually just a date when the court orders both parties to exchange everything okay display your everything any arguments any additional notes cleanings requests of weather information whatever it might be and the witness statements as well so look if you're in a small claims track there'll be one date the court will tell you when you have to exchange witness Lane will simultaneously with your opponent so let's get cut to the chase and get on to the actual statement itself now I've produced as is my want I'm actually using a client with a mission obviously work in order to show you you know real live active cases and this is quite a an interesting case he's actually bringing a claim against an opponent who agrees that the debt is owed but she doesn't want to pay it all in one lump sum to stretch it out of the wrong period of time he thinks she has got the money and she's been screening him along and she's been his allegation is that she's being somewhat what's the word flexible with the truth in terms of debtors often are so he's not and he's not happy with the court's order that she pay in installments because she's sent in response to his flame and said she can make pain trying to pay a month installments so he's asking the court for a judgment or the lump sum yeah at now so anyway here is a statement now this client is you know five star client in so far as he's pretty meticulous with the preparation of his paperwork and without actually any of my help so you can do this you know he has produced this witness statement I don't know I don't know where he's got the full mouthing for the witness statement of ROM but you know everything is online and this is pretty accurate he's formatted it nicely intelligently with the the classical front plate there he's then had a one paragraph earlier described two years and given his personal details remember any evidence that you should apply in a case whether it's an email or whether it's something actually physical and tange Paul does need a witness to produce it a witness nice if you think of a courtroom witnesses to stand up and say right I produce do you I produce this book I produce the this this bundle of email correspondence and I think evidence is X Y Zed so that is something you need to have at the beginning you then just simply number the paragraphs okay and you just go through and you tell the court firstly describe what Levinson is about to do some and what why it's relevant obviously and then you actually go on to do to enclose the evidence now here it's a near but not quite perfect witness statement okay he hasn't actually embedded the title of the witness statements in the sorry the title of the exhibits in each paragraph so what you need to do is you need to the very first thing you need to do when you're after witnessing this but get all the document will have documentation together okay and obviously this relates to the claim or the defense you've produced and to to then once you've got that together only as a last stage do you actually produce the witness statements the first stage is collating the the evidence itself by just printing it all you know to be honest with you it really is sort of easiest to just print the stuff out and then create a PDF for everything when you've completed the hardcopy work and and then you I mean let's say there are five key areas of evidence you then produce a front sheet for each of those items of evidence and and they're called exhibit plates okay because you are exhibiting evidence is the technical legal term when you produce evidence under cover of witness thing and all that with I'm on that exhibit plate I mean you don't have to do it the technical legal way but usually you we as lawyers number it name of the client John Smith J s /o one that's number of the exhibit now so let's take an example here of one exhibit let's call it is a bit too and you can see it's some emails here again the thing that's missing is that those pages need to be numbered so when you are producing your email chain of emails number them and just get a black marker and go one two three four as you're going through okay you've then got a pun a bundle of emails on the bottom right hand corner marked with a black marker that the numbered and you can then this again when you finally get round to producing the draft in the witness statement you then put you know I say that the claimant is unreliable she's made promises before this is going to repay the debt they've come to nothing please see and you can put this text in bold exhibit reference in this case JB /oh - because it's exhibit number two pages one to five or whatever it is okay and so it's important you think you can see to equate the evidence before you've drafted witness them and then to print it out and then to paginate it and then to create the exhibit plates on top so your exhibits have a covering front sheet alright so then you come to the drafting of the witness statements now if you've done that correctly you'll then find it quite easy to draft a witness statement I do it you print it out because you need to the black mark or anything I mean you don't have to use a black Marquis you could do it you could do it all in a computer okay but I heard it's a good discipline to to print documents out because it will it'll it'll eliminate errors because that's something and I'll come on to now so then you draft a witness aim and as I say you just number the paragraphs and you hit your points now this is as I say good a good witness name it's nice and short it's makes it points they usually won't be more than through five maximum ten there's three probably three main key points or perhaps five and then the accompanying evidence so don't go crazy you know just go for your best points and then select the best evidence because you must always remember that at the end of the day you've got a very busy court very busy judge is short of time he's going to want to it gonna be really document very very quickly it's not a perfect world here so it's important you know nothing else that you just used to hit your five three five ten if it's a you know complex cases lots of evidence you know points okay so that's the the witness statement and now up just a couple of points to to pull up on and that is that you know when you're drafting the same and just sort of don't worry much about dates and details I mean get the thing written in draft form and then go on and add the exhibit references and then go on and add any relevant dates that you might not have remembered and you've got to spend time it's case of personal preference but I find it's best to write the witness thing so it flows it's nice and clear you know a couple of pages in this instance and then to worry about the detail afterwards so finally I will just just say that you know once you've done all of that print off the statement you've got to have this statement of truth at the end and you've got to sign it and date it and then you know this is again why it's important I think to do it do this whole exercise and hard copy you've then produced a hard copy witness statement and you then just sort of put it together yeah witness statement on top and then that's a fight you know five exhibits so that will be five exhibit plates plate means title page into there's a technical term for a title page and and and then just put them all together with the obviously in in numerical order so you'll then have this you know small bundle best thing to do then is to sign and date and everything just to check it the best thing is to put it in the bottom drawer sleep on it come back the next day and check it because there will be errors in it there'll be things you have left out there'll be things you think actually I that's not necessary to take it out so um you know make sure to to put it in the bottom drawer actually to sleep on it as well as you can finally just so with this particular sentence itself this is a nicely drafted statement but at the end of the day you've got to remember that you are asking the court for a remedy in this case the claimant is saying I don't I'm not happy with trying to plan a month I want a lump sum and I've discussed it with this client the court doesn't know what her assets are I mean my client may know that she's unreliable and dishonest about her about this debt but the court doesn't know that and also the court will say well even if she's unreliable and dishonest you know does she have the money now in this in the case of this statement he's left out oats of important paragraph at the end which is to state that he's actually asking for a part lump sum now that's a reasonable position to take with the debt rather than asking the court for an order for the whole debt outstanding 7 half grand I want 2 3 4 grand now and I'll accept the work the rest by repayment clients on a pen a month that would be the intelligent thing to do in this particular case unless he can prove that she's got some big asset like a Bentley sitting on our drive it's probably best to do that he should also be putting in the statement perhaps not so much emphasizing that the unreliability dishonesty and the strength of his own claim but the practicalities of whether she can actually pay and therefore if he suspects that she's got an asset sitting around he should give that evidence in a statement you know so paragraph seven I live across the street from this client I noticed that she's got a an expensive macbook computer she's also got a car are you know I believe that the client has at least enough money to make some sort of lump sum payment now and I invite the court to make a lump sum payment of whatever it is two three four thousand pounds whatever the whatever you think is appropriate okay that's so that's a that's how you do a witness statement and you know always be focusing on if we just come back to this original point put putting yourselves in the position of the call and the judge busy caught busy charged you want things clear that's why your paginating the pages he wants to be able to suit you want to gather sit in court with him and say Your Honor can I go to exhibit number three page seven and they doesn't have to go always the same and I thought have I got the right statement I can't find the document where is it in public you can just you can just very clearly point to him point him in the direction of the relevant document this is kind of critical because a lot of civil litigation is about being well-prepared it's not necessarily about having the stronger case certainly if you've got a strong case you can ruin your strong case by being poorly prepared when it comes to trial you have to be ready for trial all right guys thanks for tuning in as I say I do look at me sort of the the sister vlog on drafting a defense in this instance but the same rules would apply for defense as they apply for a claim drafting pleadings but I'm just the next vlog art will be drafting drafting a defense okay good bye for now if you've got any queries info at Redwood legal dot Cote UK is the email address to to use and as I've often said in my vlogs you know you'll save themselves time and money if you want to use our support service small-claims track support service by gifting your paperwork in apple-pie order attaching it as an email sending it to us including in the email that's telling us a story of your of your dispute your case wide as you want to claim or and and and then emailing that to us before picking up the phone okay that'll save you money because we won't have to spend time you know getting your own paperwork in order you should be doing it yourself bye for now