A hybrid hearing allows some participants — the tribunal, certain counsel, or a key witness — to attend in person, while others join remotely by video, typically for procedural conferences or where a witness is located in another city or country.
The critical safeguard, agreed at the first procedural hearing rather than improvised on the day, is a technology protocol: which platform will be used, how documents will be displayed to remote participants, how a remote witness will be isolated from coaching or prompting during testimony, and a fallback plan if connectivity fails mid-hearing.
With that protocol in place, tribunals and institutions report no meaningful loss in the quality of oral evidence, while parties save materially on travel costs and hearing-room time for participants who do not need to be physically present for every sitting.