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 or a concern about a bill, write to us with the details. Address your letter to our Client Care Officer, who is responsible for client care. Our Client Care Officer is our Partner, George Persson.
Our aim will be to deal with your complaint promptly, fairly and effectively, in accordance with this procedure. The Client Care Officer may deal with your complaint himself or ask someone else in the firm to deal with it for you.
What will happen next?
- We will record your complaint in our central register. We will do this within 2 days of receiving your complaint.
- We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint. It may ask you to confirm or explain the details of your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within 4 days of us receiving your complaint. If our acknowledgement does not ask you to confirm or explain the details of your complaint, we will go straight to step 4.
- We will acknowledge your reply to our acknowledgement letter. You can expect to hear from us within 4 days of us receiving your reply.
- We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will involve the following steps:
- We will examine the information in your
- In the light of your complaint, we will then ask the person who acted for you for more information.
- We will then write to you to let you know our response to your complaint. We will do this within 7 days of receiving all the details we need from the member of staff who acted for you. We aim to respond to all complaints within 21 days.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We will then arrange for another solicitor of the firm to review our Client Care Officer’s decision within ten days.
- We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
If at the end of our procedure you are still not satisfied and you are a member of the public, a small business, a Charity, Club or Trust, you may ask the Legal Ombudsman to become involved.
The time limit for sending a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman will not be later than:
- One year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or
- One year from the date when the complainant should have realised that there was cause for complaint.
and
- Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint.
It may be your complaint relates to the manner in which we provided our service to you, or, may relate to our professional conduct. You are therefore further entitled to contact the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) (https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/). The telephone number to contact them is 0370 606 2555.
The Legal Ombudsman can be contacted via website (www.legalombudsman.org.uk) or by telephone on 0300 555 0333, or by letter to PO Box 6167 Slough SL1 0EH.
Please note that the Legal Ombudsman may not deal with a complaint about a bill if you have applied to the Court for assessment of that bill, as is your right, under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.
Complaints will be dealt with in respect of our services by either the SRA or the Legal Ombudsman under the Statutory Complaints Scheme.
