How to… do tribunal observations
Having spent a lot of time researching regulatory/disciplinary tribunals for this project, we were curious about seeing first-hand what actually happens during a tribunal hearing, for each of our professions. So far, we have conducted three pilot observations of medical, policing, and legal tribunal hearings. These observations are not one of our main data collection methods, rather a way of gaining additional insight into the processes and to check whether there was anything we might have missed in our data collection so far.
There is a growing body of literature in relation to court ethnographies (for an overview, see this edited collection), but comparatively little in relation to professional tribunals. As a result, I wanted to write this blog to provide some useful tips for conducting tribunal observations (as they are not quite the same as observing a courtroom).
Preparing for tribunal observations
Although tribunal spaces are often open to the public, it is still important to obtain ethical approval from your host institution before doing any observations. Just because a tribunal may adhere to the principles of open justice, much like courtroom ethnographies, the act of doing observational research in these spaces raises significant and complex ethical questions relating to consent, power, and positionality. It is important to have read about the ethics and method of doing tribunal observations before you do your own, particularly if you are observing cases involving sexual violence.
As with courtrooms, professional tribunals are complex social settings, and you will not be able to capture everything that goes on in a hearing. As such, it is worth thinking about what you will focus on during your observations and how you plan to take notes during the hearing. For example, are you going to write your notes by hand or do you plan on using a laptop? I always opt to write my notes by hand (and have developed my own personal shorthand) as I find that typing on a laptop feels disruptive in what is often quite an intimate and quiet space. For this project, we pulled together a data collection template (loosely based on that outlined by Olivia Smith in 2020) that we could populate after the hearing that could act as both a guide for, and summary of, our handwritten notes.
Accessing a hearing
If you are focusing on a particular type of misconduct, it can sometimes be difficult to establish which of the upcoming hearings might be relevant to your research. The type of information that the tribunal services can publish online in advance of a hearing differs between each profession. For example, the Bar Tribunal Adjudication Service is not allowed to publish details of the charges a barrister is facing, whereas police forces may publish short summaries of the allegations. Where information was not readily available online, we contacted the tribunal services using a public facing email address or webform to inquire about whether any of their forthcoming hearings may be relevant to our work. If you don’t hear back from tribunal staff – they are often small and exceptionally busy teams – it is worth giving them a phone call (if you can find a number online).
Each profession has a different approach to tribunal hearings: some are conducted online, whereas others can be in-person or hybrid. If it is not obvious which format the hearing you are requesting to view will take, ask! For this project I have observed hearings both in person and virtually. There is no ‘better’ format, each provides something different (and raises different ethical questions for the researcher). For example, during the in-person hearing, the tribunal staff were very generous with their time and spoke to me at length, during the breaks, about the tribunal process. Yet, to observe this hearing, I had to block out three days in my work calendar and work away from home/the office. This is not something that everyone can do, especially if last minute changes to the hearing schedule are made.
In contrast, it was much easier to fit the virtual observation around my existing work/personal commitments and to follow up with any questions to the tribunal staff afterwards via email. Sometimes, there may only be limited space for in-person observers (the rooms tend to be much smaller than a courtroom). If there is no room for you to observe in person, it is always worth asking if there is an option to attend remotely.
Before going to do an observation, it is always worth asking the tribunal staff how long the hearing is anticipated to last (this might differ from how long it is scheduled to on the website). The main thing to remember when you are making plans to access a tribunal (be it virtual or in-person) is that you will need to stay flexible. Things can always change; witnesses can be stood down, and rooms and timings can move.
If your request to observe is accepted, make sure you consult the tribunal website to see whether there is any etiquette that observers are expected to follow. For example, some tribunals may only allow handwritten notes to be taken (as opposed to using a laptop or tablet) and some require observers to stand, along with hearing participants, when the panel enter the room. If I could not find anything about this online, I asked the tribunal staff when I arrived at the hearing.
Doing the observation
When attending your first hearing, I found that it was helpful to take a form of ID with me and to have copies of the observation acceptance email. Unlike a court, I found that people were not as used to having researchers present, so having these documents to hand really helped. Also, tribunal staff are busy (especially on the first day of a hearing) and might not have had time to notify others about your attendance!
Something else I did when conducting observations (even for virtual ones where I was required to turn my camera on to verify who I was) was to wear my university lanyard (with my staff ID) and carry hard copies of the project information sheet. As I mentioned above, navigating the idea of participant consent is not straightforward when conducting observations. I found that the lanyard was useful for serving as a visual indicator that I was an external observer. It also encouraged people to ask about what exactly I was doing there, which encouraged broader conversations about the project, and the opportunity for me to share the information sheet.
Doing observations for this project (and for my PhD research) taught me that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ day doing observations. On some days, the hearings were fast-paced, and I spent a lot of time in the tribunal room listening to witness testimony and writing as many notes as I could. On other days I would spend most of my time waiting in corridors talking to staff while legal discussions were taking place behind closed doors, or the panel was deliberating. It might seem trivial, but I always made sure to take water and food with me; not all tribunal suites are in city centres or near to shops/cafes, and you might not always have time to venture too far from the tribunal room (especially if you are waiting for the panel to return their finding).
One of the most important things to think about when doing tribunal observations is whether there are any anonymity orders or reporting restrictions relating to the case you are observing. If you are observing a sexual misconduct hearing, there almost certainly will be. As a result, I made sure that even in my handwritten notes made ‘in the moment’ I used pseudonyms for the complainants and witnesses. When it came to writing up these notes into a Word document, I redacted any further information (such as age or job specifics) that might risk identifying the claimant.
After the observation
Once I concluded my observations, I always made sure to send an email thanking the tribunal staff for helping me to observe a hearing, and to remind them of my contact details and where they could find updates or more information about the project.
One final thing, if you do choose to do tribunal observations, remember that they are hard work! They require you to be switched on all the time as a researcher and to continuously engage with questions of positionality and power. Moreover, if you are researching topics like sexual violence, you probably will encounter some very challenging testimony and evidence. Always factor in time to debrief – for example, with colleagues, friends, a supervisor – and to focus on your own wellbeing after observing a hearing.
To cite: Richards, H.K., 2026. How to… do tribunal observations. Powerful Perpetrators project. Available at: https://powerfulperpetrators.org/how-to-do-tribunal-observations/
© Hannah Richards for the Powerful Perpetrators project, 2026.