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Sat 5th July, 2008
Lawcomm Solicitors Complaints Procedure
Our complaints procedure
If you have a complaint, please contact Mr Dhariwal, our client care partner in writing. You can write to him at Bellevue House, Southampton SO15 2AY. If necessary, Mr Dhariwal will pass your complaint to the partner in charge of the department involved in your complaint.
What will happen next?
1 We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within five days of us receiving your complaint.
2 We will record your complaint in our central register and open a section within the central register for your complaint. We will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.
3 We will acknowledge your reply to our acknowledgement letter and confirm what will happen next. You can expect to hear from us within five days of your reply.
4 We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:
- we may ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within five days;
- we may examine the reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to five days from receiving the reply and the file.
5 We may invite you to meet Mr Dhariwal to discuss and, it is hoped, resolve your complaint. We will do this within three days of receiving all the details we need from the member of staff who acted for you.
6 Within three days of any meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions we have agreed with you. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within five days of us completing the investigation.
7 At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:
- Mr Dhariwal will review his own decision within five days;
- we will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it. He or she will do this within 10 days;
- we will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take;
- we will invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know how long this process will take.
8 We will let you know the result of the review within five 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. We will also give you the name and address of the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.
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