The UK's employment tribunals face escalating backlogs and unaffordable legal representation, but mission-driven legal technology offers a way to improve access to justice for workers and small businesses
Key takeaways:
-
-
-
An emerging employment tribunal crisis — The UK’s employment tribunal system is facing unprecedented backlogs, long wait times, and unaffordable legal representation, leaving many workers and small businesses unable to effectively resolve workplace disputes.
-
Process-oriented barriers to justice — Most claims are dismissed not because they lack merit, but due to claimants disengaging from a slow and complex process, with legal costs often exceeding the value of claims and legal aid unable to meet rising demand.
-
A potential role for legal technology — Mission-driven legal tech platforms are emerging to provide affordable, scalable support and help claimants stay engaged by offering a practical solution to improve access to justice.
-
-
When a worker in the United Kingdom is unfairly dismissed or denied wages, their path to resolution runs through employment tribunals, a specialized court system separate from civil courts. As in the United States, many workers and small businesses cannot afford legal representation and must navigate the process on their own.
With backlogs at all-time highs and affordable legal services at all-time lows, this system is coming under increasing pressure. Fortunately, mission-driven technology and data analysis are emerging to level the playing field and increase access to justice.
Current state by the numbers
According to an analysis of the Ministry of Justice Tribunal Statistics Quarterly and other data sources,* in the second quarter of 2025, employment tribunals resolved just 45% of incoming claims, adding 18,000 cases to the backlog alone. In the past year, the open caseload has surged by 244%. This pressure is set to intensify as the inbound Employment Rights Act 2025 — the UK’s most significant overhaul of workplace protections in decades — is set to extend protection to six million more workers in 2027.
As the backlog increases, so do wait times. In 2025, the average wait for resolution reached 25 weeks, more than double that of 2024, with some claim types like equal pay and discrimination claims reaching up to 37 weeks. Some more complex cases are reported to have their final hearings scheduled as far out as 2029.
With only 8% of cases reaching a final hearing and the majority resolved through settlement or withdrawal, the growing backlog raises concerns about whether lengthy wait times influence how claimants choose to resolve their cases.
In the UK, a common threshold for legal affordability is a salary of £55,000, meaning around 65% of workers cannot afford legal representation. Legal aid and pro-bono services exist to support those in need, but with growing funding constraints and rising demand, these services cannot reach nearly two-thirds of claimants.
You can find more insights about how courts are managing the impact of advanced technology from our Scaling Justice series here
Tribunal awards are largely calculated from salary. This can result in a claim’s value often being lower than the cost of legal representation to pursue it. In a typical hospitality case, for example, a worker owed £1,500 in unpaid wages (equivalent to 3½ weeks of pay) has a 92% chance of representing themselves and will wait on average six months for resolution — without pay owed, legal support, or outcome certainty.
The cost, both in time and resources, also falls on employers. In lower-margin industries such as hospitality, default judgments, in which an employer does not engage with proceedings, can reach as high as 37%, compared with a national average of around 6%. For these employers and for smaller businesses more broadly, the cost of legal support may also exceed the value of defending a claim.
With rising costs and growing delays, the risk for both employers and employees is that the system becomes inaccessible, leading to outcomes shaped by who can afford to sustain the process rather than case-by-case strength.
Where justice tech fits
The conventional assumption is that self-represented claimants are at a significant disadvantage when they go to court; yet the data is more nuanced. Self-represented claimants who reach a hearing prevail 44% of the time, compared to 52% for those with legal representation — a gap of less than eight percentage points.
The greater risk is not losing at hearing but never actually reaching one. Analysis of more than 2,700 struck-out, or dismissed, cases by employment rights platform Yerty found that the majority were dismissed not for lack of merit, but because claimants stopped engaging with the process. Only 6% were struck out for having no reasonable prospect of success. This suggests that the primary barrier may not be the absence of legal representation, but the ability to sustain engagement with a slow, complex, and often opaque process.
Increasing numbers of UK workers turning to AI tools like ChatGPT for legal support highlight not only the demand for affordable access but also the risks of general-purpose tools being used in legal contexts. Fabricated case law in tribunal submissions, for example, harms users and adds further pressure to an already overstretched system.
The conventional assumption is that self-represented claimants are at a significant disadvantage when they go to court; yet the data is more nuanced.
A new generation of legal technology platforms is emerging to fill this gap, with tools purpose-built for the specific circumstances of employment law. Yerty and Valla, among others, offer AI-powered guidance tailored to the UK tribunal process, providing affordable, scalable support previously out of reach for most workers. Government organizations are also moving in this direction. For example, in its recent five-year strategy outlook government-funded employment consulting firm ACAS committed to exploring new digital services that offer faster, more accessible support.
Technology alone cannot address underfunding, judicial capacity, or fundamental power imbalances. However, if the majority of dismissed claims stem from disengagement rather than weak cases, and self-represented claimants prevail at comparable rates to those with lawyers, then the answer isn’t more lawyers — it’s better support upstream. Mission-driven legal technology can provide consistent, scalable guidance that helps both parties manage the process and avoid falling through the cracks.
The UK government’s own assessment of the Employment Rights Bill forecasts a 15% increase in claims by 2027 due to expanded eligibility. As noted above, the system is already under significant pressure before these reforms take effect, and traditional responses — more judges, more funding — too often take years to deliver.
While not a complete answer, justice tech can help address a real, measurable problem, that of keeping people engaged in a process that too often disengages them. For a hospitality worker owed back pay, a healthcare worker facing unfair dismissal, or a retail employee navigating a discrimination claim alone, that support could mean the difference between a case heard and one abandoned — and justice delayed or justice denied.
*Sources: Ministry of Justice Tribunal Statistics Quarterly (July-September 2025); Yerty analysis of 2,721 struck-out tribunal decisions and 8,761 case outcomes; ACAS Strategy 2025-2030; 2024 UK Judicial Attitude Survey, UCL Judicial Institute / UK Judiciary, February 2025.
