Complaints Handling Policy
We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.
If you have a complaint, please contact us with the details. We will acknowledge any written complaint within two working days. Thereafter, we have eight weeks to consider your complaint and provide a substantive response. In some exceptional cases we may need more time however, if so, we will let you know in advance of the eight week period.
If we have not resolved it within this time you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman.
What will happen next?
- We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within two working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
- We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our client care partner, who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
- We will then invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. The client care partner will do this within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
- Within three days of the meeting, the client care partner will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions s/he has agreed with you.
- If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, the client care partner will send you a written reply to your complaint, including his/her suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for another partner or someone unconnected with the matter at the firm to review his/her decision or an appropriate alternative such as review by another external solicitor not connected with the firm to review the matter.
- We will write to you within eight weeks of your initial complaint being received, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
- If you are still not satisfied, you can then contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint, on the address below:
Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH
Tel: 0300 555 0333 and 0121 245 3050
Website: http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/
To make a complaint online to the Legal Ombudsman, please visit their website here and complete their online complaint form.
Please note, there are strict time limits for making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, although it generally expects consumers to exhaust the firm’s complaint process before referring a complaint to it. If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of this firm’s internal investigation then you have six months from our final determination to raise the matter with the Legal Ombudsman. In addition The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of you realising there was a concern.
If your complaint relates to the costs we have charged, you may also be able to ask for a detailed assessments (as set out on our invoices) under sections 70-72 of the Solicitors Act 1974. Please note if you apply to the court for an assessment and if all or part of the bill remains unpaid at the end of that assessment, we are entitled to charge interest. There are strict time limits that apply to this process and you may wish to seek independent legal advice.
Whilst the Legal Ombudsman concerns itself with issues of poor service or costs related issues, the Solicitors Regulation Authority is available should you consider either an individual solicitor or the firm may have breached the SRA Principles. If you wish to report any matter directly to the SRA, the relevant page of the SRA website is here.
