We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all of our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to maintain and improve our standards.
We will initially deal with your complaint through our internal Complaints Procedure, which is set out below. Your complaint will be looked into by someone who was not connected with the original case about which you have complained. We will also provide you with details of how to take matters further with the Legal Ombudsman if you are still not satisfied after the internal complaints procedure has been followed.
Complaints Procedure
If you have a complaint, whether it is about the service you have received from this firm or about any bill which has been sent to you, please write to Chris Bentley or Jonathan Earle with the details.
- On the day that we receive your complaint we will record it in our central register and open a file for your complaint.
- Within 14 days of receiving your complaint, we will send you a letter acknowledging it and promising a more detailed response. We will also send to you a leaflet published by the Legal Ombudsman giving further information about complaints generally. This also provides details of the steps you may be able to take if you are still not satisfied after our complaints procedure has been followed.
- We may ask you to confirm or explain the details of your complaint further. If you provide further information to us as a result of such a request, we will acknowledge your reply within 14 days.
- We will then start to investigate your complaint. Either Chris Bentley or Jonathan Earle will initially review the file, and may ask for a written report from the person who originally dealt with your case.
- In appropriate cases we may invite you to a meeting to discuss the matter with us, and hopefully resolve your complaint. We will aim to send out any such invitation within 14 days of receiving all the details of your complaint. If such a meeting occurs, we will then write to you within 14 days to confirm what took place, and any solutions that have been agreed with you.
- In any other case we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint within 14 days of receiving all of the details of your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter.
If the suggested solution is acceptable to you then we will take any agreed action, close the complaints file, and record the outcome in our central register.
If the suggested solution is not acceptable, or you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again. We will then arrange to review any decision we have made which can happen in one of the following ways:-
- We will review the decision ourselves within 14 days, or;
- We will arrange for someone in the firm who is not connected with the complaint to review our decision. We will make arrangements within 14 days for this to happen, and we will write to you to let you know how long the process is likely to take, or;
- We will ask the local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint. We will make these arrangements within 14 days, and we will write to you to let you know how long the process is likely to take, or;
- We will invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will make this suggestion within 14 days, and we will write to you to let you know how long the process is likely to take.
We will let you know the result of any review within 14 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.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
If you are still not satisfied at this stage you may be able to take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman website (LINK?) contains details of the procedure to be followed and the timescales for doing so.