Service Tribunal
Hears appeals by civil servants against their terms and conditions of service.
The forum
Service Tribunals hear appeals by government servants in matters of their service — promotion, seniority, dismissal and the like. There is a federal tribunal and provincial ones. There is a Federal Service Tribunal and a tribunal in each province, and which one hears a matter depends on whether the servant is federal or provincial — a distinction that decides the forum before anything else.
Where it sits
The principal seat is Islamabad. It also sits at Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit. A date given at one is not a date at another, which is why the bench belongs in the record with the date.
What a firm has to track
Service matters are slow and numerous, often several for the same department. A firm needs to see them grouped, and needs to know which of them are waiting on the department rather than on the tribunal. Service matters also arrive in batches from the same department on the same facts, and they move together. A firm needs them grouped against the department as well as the client, or it will argue the same point twice without using the first result.
The date the court gives is a fact. Whoever is standing there records it in CaseMate before they leave the building, and the office acknowledges it — it does not wait to be approved.
The firm decides who goes to the next hearing, against the hearing itself. A matter at a distant bench is a travel arrangement, not a line in a list.
Every previous date, its outcome and the note taken at the time — so a partner can be answered without opening the file.
A hearing in the past with nothing recorded against it is the one thing a diary must never hide. CaseMate lists them separately.
Start with today's list.
Set your firm up in a couple of minutes, enter the cases you are running this week, and let your associates report from court.