Sinclair Law Solicitors encourages our clients to maintain full and frank communication and to raise any problems that may arise during the course of the matter.
If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of service, please feel free to raise your concerns with the solicitor in the firm who has been advising you.
Any complaint will be dealt with promptly and comprehensively as follows:
- You will receive a preliminary response from your solicitor within 28 days of receipt of the complaint or if this is not possible you will be provided with reasons. If your complaint is about the fee charged and you have not already been provided with a detailed narrative showing how the fees were incurred, we will provide this to you. Sinclair Law will work with you to reach a satisfactory conclusion. You will not be charged for the cost of complaint handling.
- If you are not satisfied with our initial response, you may then send details of your complaint to Lucy Hart who will respond to your complaint within 28 days.
- If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within a 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.
- Please note that the Legal Ombudsman is there to deal with concerns about the level of service received. Where there are more serious concerns that a solicitor or solicitor’s firm have been involved in professional misconduct then reports can also be made to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the regulator of solicitors and solicitor firms. This could be for quite unusual and serious acts of misconduct such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. We do not anticipate any such problems arising and would ask that you notify the matter supervisor straight away if you have any such concerns.
You can find out more about the Solicitors Regulation Authority, including its contact details and professional conduct rules, on its website: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/
The Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167,Slough, SL1 0EH
Tel: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
