What tends to be in dispute
Pay and hours, and whether time worked was recorded and paid. A discipline or termination decision and whether the stated reason was the real one. Leave and accommodation requests handled poorly or not at all, and disagreements about what a handbook, offer letter, or verbal assurance actually promised. Treatment connected to a protected characteristic, retaliation after someone raised a concern, which is frequently the part that grows larger than the original complaint, and disputes over confidentiality and restrictive covenants when someone leaves. Employers and employees both come to us, and from either chair the underlying shape is often the same.
Where these disputes actually go
Routing usually comes before anything else is decided. Many employers have an internal complaint process, and using it or skipping it can matter later. From there, certain claims must go first to a federal or state agency depending on the claim and the employer, while others can be brought directly. An arbitration provision buried in an offer letter or a handbook acknowledgment may take the matter out of court entirely, sometimes including whether it can be brought on behalf of a group. The paperwork signed on the first day of a job often decides the forum years later, which is why we read that before anything else.
What to have ready
The offer letter, the handbook and any acknowledgment you signed, employment or severance agreements including drafts, performance reviews, pay records and schedules, and the messages surrounding the events in question. Write a dated timeline while the sequence is still clear, since the order of events is what most disputes turn on. Preserve rather than delete on both sides, and employers should suspend routine deletion as soon as a dispute looks real. Time limits are real here, and the clock that matters is often an agency filing window rather than the court deadline people assume applies.
