About us Complaints procedure
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 enable us to help you and to improve our standards.
To assist in defining the process to be followed, we use the following definitions :-
Formal Complaint
is a ‘formal’ complaint from a client made to the Senior Director (either directly by the client or via the Legal Ombudsman (Office for Legal Complaints) (LeO) and must be dealt with in accordance with SRA procedures. The Complaints Director shall ensure that full cooperation is provided in such instances.
Dissatisfaction
is any other substantive expression of dissatisfaction (oral or written) regarding the practice’s services or of its personnel in the conduct of their duties or any request to speak to someone’s Supervisor. Such dissatisfaction may indicate potential for improvement in the practice’s processes and will be dealt with informally via ‘in-house’ procedures.
Loss of Client
even where no formal complaint or other form of dissatisfaction is expressed, the practice will attempt to identify reasons for clients instructing other firms.
Our complaints procedure
1. If you have a complaint, please first contact the fee earner dealing with your case. If you are not satisfied within 14 days submit the details of your complaint in writing to that fee earner if you have not already done so.
2. Upon receipt of a written complaint this will be referred to the fee earner dealing with your matter and a copy will be given to our client care Director (currently Mr G Bennett at our Uxbridge Office). We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 2 working days. If the complaint concerns the client care Director a copy will be given to another Director at the Uxbridge Office whose name will be provided to you. The complaint will be entered in our Central Register.
3. We will then investigate your complaint. If we require further information we will let you know within 14 days of receiving your complaint. We may request you to attend a meeting to discuss your complaint. In any event we shall endeavour to give a full reply within 21 days of having sufficient information from you.
4. If you are unable to resolve your complaint with our fee earner or receive no reply your next step is to write direct to our client care Director (or in the case of a complaint against him or her to the alternative Director notified or any other Director in the absence of notification) asking him or her to investigate your complaint.
5. Your complaint will then be reviewed again and you may expect either a request to attend a meeting to discuss your complaint or a full reply within 21 days of receipt of your request.
6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to the client care Director again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen within 21 days.
7. You should allow us up to 8 weeks to resolve your complaint. If, after 8 weeks, we have failed to deal with your complaint to your satisfaction, you can involve the Legal Ombudsman.
8. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you can have the complaints independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about legal services with Lawyers. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within 1 year of the date of the act of omission about which you are concerned, or within 1 year of your realising the concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of our final response to you.
9. The contact details of the Legal Ombudsman are:
Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH
Tel: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
10. What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.
Visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
NB If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.