We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it, or any concerns that you may have if something is troubling you. This will help us to improve our service to our clients.
A complaint is:
You can raise a complaint by phone, although in the first instance, we’d prefer if you write to us by email or letter with full details of your complaint so that we have a good understanding of the issues being highlighted.
If you have a concern, or complaint, please contact the person dealing with your matter as soon as you become aware of the issue to try and resolve it with them. In many cases the person dealing with your matter will be able to resolve any issue for you immediately. This procedure will also apply to prospective clients who we have refused to provide a service to, or persistently, or unreasonably offered an unwanted service to, but only if the prospective client has evidence to show that we did not have reasonable grounds to do so.
If the issue is not resolved at this point the matter will be referred to the person’s Supervisor. The name of the Supervisor will be given to you by the person dealing with your matter. The Supervisor will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within 7 days of becoming involved and will enclose a copy of this procedure.
The Supervisor will carry out an independent investigation and respond to you, usually within 14 days. Sometimes we may suggest a meeting if we think it would help resolve the issues. If the Supervisor is unable to produce a full reply within the 14 day period, they will contact you again with an estimated date by which they expect to have completed their investigations.
If the Supervisor is unable to resolve matters to your satisfaction, they will refer your matter to one of our senior lawyers. The Supervisor will give you the details of the senior lawyer.
Our Director with ultimate responsibility for client care is Abdurahman Suleman. If necessary, he will review your complaint if the people identified in this process so far are unable to resolve matters to your satisfaction. He will review the findings of the investigation carried out to that point and will give you his response, including any suggestions for resolution, within 21 days of the matter being referred to him.
If at the end of this process you remain unhappy you should contact us again to explain why you remain unhappy with our response and we will review your comments. We will write to you within 14 days advising you of our final position on your complaint and explaining the reasons. If you are not satisfied with our response, or if we have taken over 8 weeks to reply then you should contact the Legal Ombudsman.
If you remain unhappy after the above process has been followed, you can take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving our final response and within 1 year from the date of the act or omission giving rise to the complaint, or alternatively within 1 year from the date you should reasonably have known there were grounds for complaint.
Unresolved Data Protection complaints should be directed to the Information Commissioner whose contact details are provided in our Privacy Notice provided to you at the outset of instruction or a copy is available on our website. We will issue a final letter advising you about this.
Before they will investigate a complaint, the Legal Ombudsman will require the firm’s internal Complaints Procedure to have been exhausted.
They can be contacted at PO Box 6167, Slough, SE1 0EH, email to enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk, or by phone on 0300 555 0333. Their website address is www.legalombudsman.org.uk
The Legal Ombudsman may:
Abdurahman Suleman is based at Wentworth Building, 1b Fairways Office Park, Pittman Way, Preston, PR2 9LF. His telephone number is 01772 653333, or e-mail him at ars@amssolicitors.co.uk.
And we will carry out a free analysis of your case.