Complaints Procedure

How to make a complaint:

Stage One – If you have cause for concern or complaint, we are confident that it can be resolved by the person handling your matter or where appropriate another member of the relevant team. In the first instance you should raise your concerns with the person handling your matter as soon as possible. We aim to provide a response to your concerns within 5 working days.

Stage Two – If your complaint cannot be resolved by the individual responsible for handling your matter, you may refer it to that person’s supervisor.  Their name will have been provided to you during the initial stages of our engagement with you.  We aim to ensure you receive a response within 5 working days of the supervisor being made aware of your unresolved concerns.

Our response times may be longer if the issues are complex.

Stage Three – If your concerns cannot be resolved by the supervisor, the matter may be referred, preferably in writing, to the Complaints Handling Partner.  If the Complaints Handling Partner is the person you are dealing with, or is not available, you should refer this to their deputy.

What will happen if you raise a Stage Three complaint:

1. We will acknowledge your complaint (usually within 5 working days of receipt) and, if necessary, ask you to provide more details.
2. We will investigate your complaint by following the steps below:

• Discuss the complaint and your matter with the person who has been handling your file.
• Consider the file in relation to your complaint.

1. We will aim to provide a final response to you, setting out our views and any remedy that we feel to be appropriate, within 8 weeks of receiving your Stage One complaint.

If, after this process, you remain dissatisfied, you may refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, provided you meet the criteria set out in the Legal Ombudsman’s Scheme Rules. The Legal Ombudsman will review your complaint independently, and this will not affect how we handle your matter.

In order to accept a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first.  The Legal Ombudsman stipulates that you must take your complaint to them:

• within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint

and

• no more than one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or
• no more than one year from the date you should reasonably have known there was a cause for complaint.

If you are unhappy with our conduct, you can refer the matter to our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA); details of how to raise matters with the SRA can be found on their website.

There are alternative complaints handling bodies, such as Ombudsman Services and Small Claims Mediation, which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services.   However, we have chosen not to adopt an alternative dispute resolution process.

If you are dissatisfied with how we have handled your personal data and would like to raise a complaint, please refer to the Data Privacy Notice that was provided to you at the start of your matter for details of how to do this.