A Practical Guide to Decision-Making in Courts, Tribunals, Regulatory Panels and Workplace Hearings

* This book is on pre-release sale. Anticipated publishing date 1/8/2026. *

A practical handbook for everyone who is required to make decisions that affect other people’s lives, by two of the UK’s most experienced practitioners in judicial and quasi-judicial decision-making.

Decision-making sits at the heart of justice, fairness and organisational integrity. Across courts, tribunals, regulatory bodies, workplaces and institutions of every kind, individuals are required to weigh evidence, resolve disputed facts and reach fair, reasoned conclusions. Yet despite the importance of that responsibility, many decision-makers receive little formal training in how to approach the task. This book is designed to close that gap.

What Professionals Say About This Book

“Decision-making sits at the heart of justice, fairness, and organisational integrity. The strength of this work lies in its practical focus. It brings together legal principles, cognitive psychology, and real-world decision-making experience in a way that is rigorous yet accessible. A central theme is that good decisions do not happen by instinct alone. They are the product of structured thinking, careful analysis, and well-supported reasoning. At a time when transparency, fairness and accountability are under increasing scrutiny, the ability to make clear, structured and defensible decisions has never been more important.”

From the Foreword

About the Book

Judgecraft is not concerned with what to decide. It is concerned with how to decide. It sets out the discipline of decision-making itself: how to absorb evidence, weigh it against competing accounts, manage bias and time pressure, and produce a decision that is structured, defensible, and capable of withstanding scrutiny.

The book is written for decision-makers across many settings. Judges and tribunal members in any jurisdiction; professional regulatory panel members in healthcare, legal, financial services and education; workplace decision-makers handling disciplinary, grievance and appeal processes; investigators and inquiry panels determining findings of fact; ombudsmen, adjudicators and complaint handlers; and licensing, planning and admissions panels. It is also written for the people who advise, support and present cases to decision-makers, including HR professionals, in-house lawyers and external advocates.

The Meadowbrook case study runs through the book as a single evolving file, introduced early and revisited as new evidence, new arguments and new pressures appear. Decision-makers are invited to apply each tool to the developing case before reading how the authors would have applied it themselves. The result is a book that can be read end-to-end as a course in decision-making, or used as an aide-memoire opened at the relevant chapter when a specific case arrives on the desk.

About the Authors

Leslie Cuthbert is a barrister, advocate, judicial trainer and author of Effective Interviewing for Disciplinary, Grievance and Complaints Investigations and 365 Daily Advocacy Tips. He is former Chair of the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates and has trained judicial and quasi-judicial decision-makers nationally and internationally for many years.

Robin Somerville is a practising barrister, accredited commercial and workplace mediator, accredited workplace investigator and fee-paid judge. He has been involved in more than 1,000 contested matters across litigation, mediation, investigation and tribunal proceedings, and his questioning approach has been examined in the High Court and Court of Appeal in Somerville v Nursing and Midwifery Council. He is the author of The Workplace and Corporate Investigator’s Handbook, Winning in the Witness Box, Winning in Commercial Mediation, Winning in Workplace and Employment Mediation, Shareholder Disputes and Winning in Family Business Disputes.

Who This Book Is For

This guide is written for any decision-maker whose role requires the assessment of evidence and the resolution of disputed facts, including:

• judges, tribunal members and legally qualified chairs in any jurisdiction
• members of professional regulatory panels in healthcare, legal, financial services, teaching and similar fields
• workplace decision-makers involved in disciplinary, grievance and appeal processes
• investigators and those responsible for determining findings following investigations
• ombudsmen, adjudicators and complaint handlers
• panel members in licensing, planning, education and other settings
• HR professionals and managers responsible for internal processes
• lawyers and representatives presenting cases before decision-makers
• those advising organisations on governance, fairness and procedural integrity

It is suitable for those new to decision-making and for experienced practitioners who want a structured way to sharpen and document their reasoning.

What You Will Learn

The book explains:

• the foundations of judgecraft: fairness, evidence, and the nature of truth and facts
• how to gather, understand and assess different kinds of evidence
• how to recognise and manage the cognitive biases and heuristics that distort decisions
• how to conduct hearings, ask better questions, and manage the dynamics of a panel
• how to deliberate collectively without losing independent judgment
• how to construct, reason and test a decision
• how to write reasoned decisions that withstand appeal and scrutiny
• how to use the Judgecraft Toolkit: practical checklists and templates for use in real cases
• how judgecraft principles apply across courts, tribunals, regulators, workplaces and other settings

Contents Overview

The book is organised in eight parts that follow the decision-making process from first instructions through to writing the reasoned decision.

Part I: Foundations of Judgecraft. The principles of fairness, the nature of evidence, what counts as a fact, impartiality and independence as active disciplines, and the difference between making decisions alone and as part of a panel.

Part II: Evidence: Gathering and Types. How evidence is gathered, the different forms it takes (oral, documentary, hearsay, circumstantial, expert, contemporaneous), and how to understand what each form is actually telling you.

Part III: Evidence: Assessing and Drawing Conclusions. How to weigh competing accounts, assess credibility and reliability, handle inconsistent or partial evidence, and reach findings of fact on the balance of probabilities or the criminal standard.

Part IV: Decision Errors: Bias, Heuristics and Human Factors. The cognitive shortcuts that distort decisions, the unconscious biases that affect every decision-maker, and the practical disciplines for recognising and managing them.

Part V: The Hearing. The conduct of hearings, communication with parties and representatives, asking effective questions from the bench, managing time and energy across a long hearing day, and the dynamics of collective decision-making in panels.

Part VI: Reaching and Explaining Decisions. How to structure deliberations, how to construct a reasoned decision, how to test the reasoning before publishing it, and how to write a decision that explains itself clearly to the parties and survives appeal.

Part VII: The Judgecraft Toolkit. A complete set of practical checklists, templates and frameworks for use in real cases. Used proportionately, the toolkit supports structured reasoning without replacing individual judgment.

Part VIII: Compliance and Emerging Issues. Including the use of AI in decision-making and the procedural issues raised by modern hearing formats.

Appendices: Judgecraft Across Jurisdictions; the full Meadowbrook case file; further reading; decision templates and tools; and seven structured Judgecraft exercises using the Meadowbrook materials.

Why Judgecraft Matters

Decisions in courts, tribunals, regulatory panels and workplace hearings carry serious consequences. Findings of fact can end careers, remove professional licences, dismiss employees, change custody arrangements and order substantial financial payments. The integrity of every one of those decisions depends on the discipline applied by the person making it.

Despite this, many decision-makers are appointed on seniority, technical expertise or subject-matter knowledge rather than training in decision-making itself. The result is that decisions are sometimes reached by instinct, intuition or pattern-matching, when the situation calls for structured analysis. Good decisions, the book argues, are not accidental. They are structured, deliberate and capable of being improved with practice.

This book is intended to help every reader make better decisions, more consistently, with reasoning that will withstand scrutiny.

Purchase the Book

Price: £49.99

Buy Direct

Bulk purchase enquiries welcome for:

• judicial training programmes
• professional regulators training panel members
• universities teaching dispute resolution, advocacy and adjudication
• ombudsman services and adjudicator networks
• HR functions training internal decision-makers
• chambers and law firms building team libraries

Related Books and Training

• The Workplace and Corporate Investigator’s Handbook: applying judgecraft principles to workplace investigations
• Winning in the Witness Box: the witness’s view of the decision-maker’s process
• Winning in Commercial Mediation: how decisions are avoided through settlement
• Workplace investigation training: training for HR and legal teams making disciplinary decisions