Complaints procedure

Our aim is to provide our clients with excellent levels of client service. However, we recognise that there may be times when you feel we fall short of that intention and you may wish to raise a complaint. The first port of call for your complaint should be to the relevant fee earner or client partner (or you can contact our senior partner, Caroline Green, direct) who will deal with your complaint in line with our internal complaints procedure. Complaints are investigated free of charge and we will not charge you any fee for handling your complaint.

1. We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 7 days of receiving it and explain how we will deal with your complaint.
2. The next step will be to investigate your complaint. This will usually involve reviewing your file and speaking to the fee earner/partner who acted for you. It may also involve a discussion/meeting with you and if this is considered appropriate, we will advise you accordingly.
3. We will aim to report to you with the outcome of our investigations as soon as possible. This will ordinarily be within 28 days of sending the written acknowledgement.
4. If we need to adjust any of these timescales, we will notify you accordingly.

We hope to be able to resolve all complaints internally as swiftly as possible.

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

If we are unable to resolve your complaint you may be able to ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint or an alternative complaints body, such as ProMediate (www.promediate.co.uk). We believe that the Legal Ombudsman’s scheme is the most suitable for legal complaints and they would be our suggestion if we were unable to resolve your complaint.

The Legal Ombudsman will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case. Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first.

The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.

The Legal Ombudsman’s contact details are:

Telephone: 0300 555 0333 Minicom: 0300 555 1777

Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Post: Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

The Ombudsman will not accept complaints where the act/omission/date of awareness was before 6 October 2010. You should also note that the Ombudsman may not consider a complaint about a bill if you have applied to the court for it to be assessed.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can raise your concerns directly with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Non-client complaints

If you are not a client of this firm but you wish to complain about the conduct of the firm or its employees, please send details of your complaint to the Risk and Compliance team (Compliance@brownejacobson.com).