Early conciliation came into effect in Northern Ireland on 27 January 2020 and as a result any Claimant wishing to lodge a Tribunal claim must first notify the Labour Relations Agency of their intention to do so and obtain an early conciliation certificate before progressing a claim to the Industrial Tribunal.  Unfortunately, due to the ongoing pandemic we have seen limited cases where the Tribunal in Northern Ireland have been required to consider issues arising from early conciliation. In this month’s article we have therefore decided to look at some case law from Great Britain, where early conciliation has been in place since 2014, to get a sense of the type of issues which may arise from early conciliation