Wrongful termination occurs when you are fired in a way that violates public policy and may include situations where you were forced to resign (called constructive discharge). If your employer fired you, or asked you to resign, or if you quit because you felt working conditions were intolerable, you may have a case for wrongful discharge.  If you suspect that you’ve been wrongfully discharged, you will need to contact a lawyer and schedule an initial consultation. To make that first meeting as fruitful as possible, it will be necessary to provide copies of a number of documents for the lawyer to review.  Here is useful list of 18 things your lawyer may want to review.

A key item for review is a diary or chronology, or a written journal of events, with dates of important employment problems, any opposition you made to employment policies or practices, any participation you may have had in investigation of any discrimination complaint, meetings, and adverse actions taken against you.

If you kept such a journal, good; make a copy. If not, start recreating the series of events from memory, emails, documents, your calendar, and whatever else can help jog your memory. This is done most easily on a PC, either as a table in Microsoft Word or as a modified spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.

It’s unfortunate that many are faced with wrongful termination at some point in their career.  Therefore, if you suspect that you have been treated unfairly, having copies of documentation for your lawyer to review will help them determine if you have been the victim of wrongful termination.