Complaints Procedure

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all of our clients. In the rare event that something goes wrong, please tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards and service to you. 

Complaints Procedure

If you have any concerns in relation to services we have provided to you, including any complaint about any of our bills, then please inform us immediately so that we can do our best to address your concern. We do not have many complaints, but sometimes misunderstandings arise and can be dealt with amicably and expeditiously. Concerns can often be resolved by an informal discussion with the partner responsible for your matter or with our complaints partner, Gary Duke-Cohan, and we aim to deal with concerns in this way wherever possible. 

  1. Within 14 days of receiving the written complaint, we will send you an email or letter acknowledging your complaint.
  2. Your complaint will be recorded and investigated, particularly by examining your file and instructions.
  3. Within a further 14 days, we will reply substantively and on occasions ask you to confirm or explain any details. 
  4. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again.  We will then arrange to review our decision.  We will generally aim to do this within 14 days, and this will happen in one of the following ways:-
    (a) Gary Duke-Cohan will review his own decision or 
    (b) We will arrange for someone else in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it.
  5. We will let you know the result of the review within 14 days at the end of the review.  At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on the complaint, explaining our reason.

Legal Ombudsman

If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you may be entitled to have the complaint independently reviewed by the legal ombudsman. The legal ombudsman investigates complaints about issues relating to services provided by a lawyer. We very much hope that this will not be necessary, but if you remain dissatisfied after receiving our final response to your complaint (including a complaint relating to an invoice), you can contact the Legal Ombudsman as follows:


If you wish to refer a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, it should be done within:

  • Within six months of receiving our final response to your complaint

AND

  • No more than one year from the date of the act or omission to which the complaint relates; or
  • No more than one year of you becoming aware of that act or omission.

The Legal Ombudsman has restricted the categories of clients who are eligible to complain to it. Broadly speaking, a complainant must be an individual (including trustees, personal representatives and beneficiaries of Estates), a small business or a charity or club with an annual net income of less than £1 million. For further guidance, please refer to the Legal Ombudsman Scheme Rules and guidance.

If you wish to make a complaint relating to a bill, you must do so within one month of receiving the bill, failing which we will be under no obligation to investigate or to attempt to resolve the complaint. You may also have the right to apply to the court for assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974, or Part 48 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1999, normally within twelve months of delivery of the bill. The Legal Ombudsman may decline to consider your complaint if you have applied to the court for assessment of the bill.

No charge will be made for the time spent in investigating and responding to a complaint.

You may separately complain about us to the SRA, whose details and procedure are published on their website (www.sra.org.uk). Please note that the SRA does not deal with complaints about poor service.

For more information, contact the Legal Ombudsman directly.