Complaints
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Complaints to Woolliscrofts Solicitors
Woolliscrofts Solicitors are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all of our clients. If you feel that we have failed to achieve an acceptable standard of service please do tell us – as it is only by doing so that we have the opportunity to address your concerns in addition to generally monitoring and, where necessary, improving our quality of service.
Details of how to raise a Complaint with Woolliscrofts Solicitors are set out in our Complaints Policy, a copy of which can be viewed here.
Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman
The Legal Ombudsman is an independent complaints body, established under the Legal Services Act 2007, which deals with legal services complaints. Please, however, note that the Legal Ombudsman service cannot be used by businesses or most other organisations unless they are below certain size limits. Further details are available from the Office of the Legal Ombudsman.
The Legal Ombudsman can help you if you are not happy with your solicitor’s work or service and need to put things right. Examples include:
- Not replying to your e-mails, letters or calls;
- Losing your documents or giving you unclear advice;
- Charging you an amount you are not happy with;
- Not explaining issues properly so you do not understand.
Before making a complaint to the Office of the Legal Ombudsman you must ordinarily first of all give Wooliscrofts Solicitors an opportunity to deal with your complaint under our own internal complaints handling process. Under the Scheme Rules of the Legal Ombudsman service providers have a period of eight weeks to respond to complaints. If Woolliscrofts Solicitors fail to respond and deal with your complaint within eight weeks of you making a complaint to us, you can then escalate your compliant to the Office of the Legal Ombudsman, the contact details for whom are contained within section 11 of our Complaints Policy.
If Woolliscrofts Solicitors deal with your complaint within eight weeks you have the right to escalate your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman once we have made it clear that we have issued our final response to your complaint.
The Scheme Rules of the Legal Ombudsman contain time limits of relevance to the complaints which will be ordinarily accepted for investigation and if you fail to abide by those time limits it is unlikely that the Legal Ombudsman will investigate your complaint. Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within 6 months of receiving a Final Response to your Complaint(s) from this Practice AND no later than one year from when the problem giving rise to your complaint occurred or one year from when you should reasonably have become aware of the issues(s) giving rise to your Complaint(s). In any event, the Legal Ombudsman will not accept Complaints where the act / omission or date of awareness were before 6th October 2010.
The Legal Ombudsman does have discretion to extend the timescale beyond one year where it is considered that it would be fair and reasonable to do so, however, this will not be a given and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
To view the Scheme Rules of the Legal Ombudsman in full, please see the Scheme Rules on the Legal Ombudsman’s website.
Complaints to The Solicitors Regulation Authority
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) work with Solicitors and Law Firms to make sure they comply with their Principles, to make sure that we behave independently, fairly and with integrity to service the interests of our clients and the public interest. The SRA are unable to deal with complaints about poor service and do not have the power to award compensation for poor service, or to reduce or refund your legal fees.
In addition to welcoming and investigating information about dishonesty or breaches of their Principles, the SRA also investigate allegations of discrimination. Further information regarding reporting individual Solicitors or Law Firms to the SRA can be viewed on the SRA’s website.