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The night before Australia · check your court 5 min read

Hearing-eve: route, script and sleep

Part 2 of the hearing-eve checklist. The building, the five questions, and the night before.

Part 2 of 2

Part 2 of the hearing-eve checklist. The building, the five questions, and the night before.

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Hearing-eve checklist: documents and kit

Verify with

A senior civil trial solicitor.

Building and route

Courts in NSW often sit in more than one building, and the same court can list matters in different locations. A courthouse and a registry can be in different places. The building you filed in is not always the building you appear in.

  1. Confirm the exact building and street address from the listing, the court's daily list or the registry, not from memory. Save the address in the same note or calendar entry as the hearing itself, so the frightened version of you tomorrow morning has nothing to work out.
  2. Check how you will get there and how long it takes at the time you will be travelling. Then add thirty minutes.
  3. If a document must be delivered to chambers or the registry before a set time, treat that time as the real deadline and plan to arrive well before it. Chambers and registry counters keep their own hours.
  4. Know where you will park or which station you will use, and have a fallback if the first plan fails.
  5. Aim to be through security and sitting outside the courtroom twenty to thirty minutes before the list starts.

Most NSW courts publish daily lists online. Check the list again in the morning in case the courtroom or time has changed. The court's own help pages explain what to expect on arrival and how to find support in the building.

Tomorrow's one page

Write one page. Not submissions, not an essay, and not a substitute for any written submissions or evidence the court has directed. A page you can read in the thirty seconds before your matter is called. It answers five questions.

The five questions
1. What is this hearing for, in one sentence? 2. What am I asking the court to do today? (The orders or directions, numbered.) 3. What can I agree to if the other side proposes it? (Dates, timetables, adjournments with conditions.) 4. What will I not agree to today without time to consider? (Say "I would ask for a short time to consider that" rather than saying yes.) 5. What is the one document or passage I may need to find quickly, and which tab is it behind?

Add a short line of plain facts you will need if asked: when the matter started, what stage it is at, the next date already fixed. Nothing else. If you find yourself writing argument, stop and put the pen down.

Keep the sentence short in the room

Say what you are asking for, then stop. If asked a question you cannot answer, "I am not sure, and I would rather not guess" is a complete answer. The directions hearing guide describes what usually happens in the room.

Look after the body

You will be sitting in a hard chair, listening for your name, for a long time. The night before is not the night for one more read-through at 1am.

  • Eat a proper meal. Drink water. Skip the alcohol; it does not help sleep and it does not help the morning.
  • Stop working at a set time. Put the documents in the bag and close it.
  • If your mind is looping, write the loop down on paper and leave it on the desk. The First 48 Hours guide has a short breathing reset if you want one.
  • Tell one person where you are going and roughly when you expect to be done.

From Jordan's case file

Fictional example: The night the printer stopped at page four
Jordan had to deliver a bundle to the judge's chambers by 10am for a directions hearing in his matter with Meridian Builders. He had the PDF finished by 8pm and started printing. The printer produced four pages, made a noise he had not heard before, and retired. He copied the PDF to a USB stick, went to bed, and printed it at an office-supply store when it opened in the morning. He assembled the lever-arch binder on the counter, slid in the spine label he had printed two days earlier, and set off. Then he discovered he had gone to the building where he had filed the documents, not the building where the judge sat. A taxi across town got him to the chambers counter with a few minutes to spare. What saved the morning was not calm. It was the USB stick he had made without needing it, the spine label he had printed early, and a checklist that told him the delivery time was the real deadline. What nearly lost it was assuming the building. Jordan's checklist now has a line that reads: "Which building? Confirm, don't assume."

Printable checklist

  • Documents frozen at a set time; nothing new after it except an urgent correction or something a court direction requires
  • Final versions confirmed; sealed or stamped copies where they exist
  • Court book index checked tab by tab
  • Every PDF on a USB stick and on the phone
  • Bag packed and by the door: bundle, orders, script, notepad, pens, ID, charger, food, water
  • Exact building and address confirmed from the listing or the court, and saved with the hearing entry
  • Route planned with thirty minutes spare; a fallback for parking or transport
  • Any delivery deadline treated as the real deadline
  • One-page script written, printed twice
  • Phone and laptop charged; two alarms set
  • Meal eaten, work stopped, bag closed
General information only, not legal advice. Procedures, filing and delivery requirements, and what may be handed up differ between courts, lists and individual matters in NSW and elsewhere. Check the current rules, practice notes, orders and registry instructions for your court. All names, matters and events in the examples are fictional. Last reviewed: September 2026.