Our Complaints Procedure
We value your business and do not wish for you to have any reason to be unhappy with the service we have given to you. We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients and it is therefore important that you raise any concerns you have with us at the earliest possible opportunity so that we may endeavour to improve our service and address your concerns.
We set out below a copy of our revised Complaints Procedure.
If at any time you are unhappy with any aspect of our handling of your case and/or our charges, then we would ask you to raise it the member of staff who is dealing with your matter in the first instance. If this is not appropriate, or if you are dissatisfied with their response, you should write to the supervising partner for the practice area handling your instruction.
If you remain dissatisfied, please contact Kirsty Strong, our Complaints Partner and she will endeavour to resolve the problem with you. Please set out your complaint clearly and ensure your letter quotes Frodshams client file reference number.
What will happen next?
- We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint and enclosing a copy of our Complaints Procedure within 5 working days of receipt of your complaint.
- We may need to ask for further details if we are unclear on any aspect and if so, we will ask you to provide those within 5 working days of confirmation of receipt of your complaint. We will acknowledge any further provided details within 5 working days of receipt.
- We will then investigate your complaint. This would normally involve passing your complaint to the Head of Department who will review your matter/file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
- We may feel it necessary to invite you to a meeting. This meeting may be face to face, video call, or by telephone. If we meet, we will write to you within five working days of the meeting to confirm what took place and any solutions we may have agreed with you.
- Following our investigation, we will write to you with our view of your complaint, and how to resolve it. We endeavour to do this within 8 weeks of receiving your complaint. If we require additional time to deal with your complaint, we will notify you as soon as we practically can and will give you reasons for our delay.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for another solicitor to review the decision. We will then write to you confirming our final decision on your complaint and explain our reasons for this, within 14 working days of your request for another solicitor to review the decision.
- If we remain unable to resolve your complaint, this may be referred now to the Legal Ombudsman (LO) PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH. Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk Telephone 0300 555 03333) to consider the complaint. Before looking at your complaint, the LO will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. They will allow us 8 weeks to resolve your complaint.
The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within 6 months of receiving our final response to your complaint and no later than a year after the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within a year of you realising there was a concern.
You can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly due to a protected characteristic such as race or gender. You can find details for the SRA at www.sra.org.uk or by calling 0370 606 2555.
We confirm we have Professional Indemnity cover. Territorial coverage of our Policy is worldwide.
