Our Complaints Policy
We value your business, and we do not wish you to have any reason to be unhappy with us. We are confident that we will be able to provide you with a high-quality service. It is therefore important that you raise any concerns you may have with us immediately, so that we may address them and learn lessons for the future.
Our complaints procedure
If you are dissatisfied with the service you have received from us, or if you would like our advice to you reviewed, or if you wish to discuss or challenge a bill, please write to the member of staff who is dealing with your matter. If that is not appropriate, or if you are still dissatisfied, you should contact Robert McKellar who is the Firm’s Director of Legal Services and General Counsel ([email protected]).
Please set out as clearly as you can the nature of your complaint or concern and how it has arisen. Please ensure your letter quotes our file reference number and the name of the individual at the Firm whose service you are dissatisfied with.
Upon receipt of your complaint
Within five working days of receipt of your complaint we will:
Record your complaint in our central database
Send you an email acknowledging receipt
Ask you to confirm or explain any details which are unclear and
Let you know the name of the person who will be investigating your complaint if it is not Robert McKellar.
If we have asked for further details, we will acknowledge those within five working days of receipt and confirm what will happen next.
Our investigation
1. Within seven working days of receiving your complaint (or the further details requested), we will ask the individual who acted for you to comment and will review your file.
2. Within 14 working days of receiving your complaint (or the further details requested), we will write to you with our view of your complaint, and how we propose to resolve it.
3. We may invite you to a (remote) meeting. If we meet, we will write to you within five working days of the meeting to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you.
4. If you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again. We will review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
The person you met, or who wrote to you, will review their own decision within five working days
Or
We will arrange for someone else, who has not been involved in your complaint, to review it. They will do this within 14 working days.
Or
We will invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know how long this process is likely to take.
5. We will then:
Write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explain our reasons, within 14 working days of the end of the review and (if appropriate) give you the name and address of the Legal Ombudsman. This communication will happen no more than eight weeks from receipt of your complaint. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint. Normally you will have six months to do that or within six years of the act or omission about which you are complaining occurring (or if outside of this period, within three years of when you should reasonably have been aware of it).
6. If we have to change any of the time scales above, we will let you know and explain why.
1 April 2021