Complaints Procedure

Our Complaints 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.  

Our Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint, contact us with the details.

The Solicitors Code of Conduct requires us to tell you that you are entitled to complain about our bill to you and there may also be a right to object to the bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman and/or by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. If all or part of the bill remains unpaid, we will charge interest.

What will happen next?

1. We will either telephone you or send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. You can expect to hear from us within two days of us receiving your complaint.

2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.

3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps.

  • We will pass your complaint to our client care partner, within 3 days. If you are complaining about him/her, we will pass your complaint to another partner within 3 days.
  • He/ she will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 5 days.
  • He/she will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. And, if necessary, he or she may also speak to them. This will take up to 3 days from receiving their reply and the file.

4. The client care partner (or if appropriate another partner) may then invite you to a meeting and discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. He or she will do this within 3 days.

Within 2 days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions has agreed with you. 

5. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint.  This will include suggestions for resolving the matter.  The client care partner  will do this within 5 days of completing the investigation.

6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:-

  • Another partner of the firm will review the initial decision within 10 days.
  • We will ask another firm of local solicitors to review your complaint within 5 days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
  • We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within 5 days.  We will let you know how long this process will take.

7. We will let you know the result of the review at a) and b) above within 5 days of its end. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If we have to change any of the time scales above, we will let you know and explain why.

The Legal Ombudsman

You can bring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman service once we have made it clear that we have issued our final response. Please be aware that any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six months of the you having received a final written response from us about your complaint. The Legal Ombudsman has strict time limits and 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 your realising there was a concern. The contact details are:-

The Legal Ombudsman could help you if you are not happy with your solicitor’s work or service and need to put things right.

Examples include:-

  • Not replying to your emails, letters or calls within a reasonable time.
  • Losing your documents or giving you unclear advice.
  • Charging you an amount you are not happy with.
  • Not explaining issues properly so you do not understand

SRA

If someone thinks a solicitor might be dishonest or you have concerns about their ethics or integrity, they have the right to notify our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). There are no time limits for making a report but there are limits on what the SRA will consider. Please note that the SRA is not able to deal with issues of poor service (complaints of this nature should instead be referred to the Legal Ombudsman).

Contact the SRA at:

The Cube
199 Wharfside Street
Birmingham
B1 1RN
t: 0370 606 2555 or email contactcentre@sra.org.uk or visit https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/