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. There will be no legal repercussions or detriment to you or your case if you make a complaint. Your complaint will be handled confidentially and not disclosed to any third party.
What will happen next?
- We will 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 receive our letter within one week of us receiving your complaint.
- We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:
- We will pass your complaint to Sean Mcloughlin, our Client Care Manager, within three days.
- He will ask the member of staff who acted for you to respond to your complaint within one week.
- He will then examine their reply and the information in your file. He may also speak to them. This will take up to one week from receiving their response and the file.
- Sean Mcloughlin will be in touch with you within two days of examining the response to make arrangements to discuss your complaint, either over the telephone or in person. Within two days of this discussion he will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions he has agreed with you.
- 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 senior member of the firm will review Sean Mcloughlin’s decision within ten days.
- We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
- We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take.
- We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. We will also give you the name and address of our Consumer Complaints Service. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint.
- We have eight weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this time you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman. If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint. They can be contacted as follows: By telephone: 0300 555 0333 (8.30am-5.30pm – Monday to Friday) or, if calling from overseas, +44 121 245 3050
By email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Address: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ. Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint and within one year of the act or omission about which you are complaining occurring (or if outside of this period, within one year of when you should reasonably have been aware of it).
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
