Clients are encouraged to discuss any feeling of dissatisfaction with the fee earner acting in their matter. In most cases, problems or misunderstandings can be resolved at this level.

When we receive a complaint, we record all the information you have given to us.

We use that information to try to resolve your complaint.

If your complaint reasonably requires us to contact some other person, we may decide to give to that other person some of the information contained in your complaint. We do this as infrequently as possible, but it is a matter for our sole discretion as to whether we do give information, and if we do, what that information is.

We may also compile statistics showing information obtained from this source to assess the level of service we provide, but not in a way that could identify you or any other person.

We want to give you the best possible service. However, if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about the service, provided then you should inform us immediately, so that we can do our best to resolve the problem.

In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the person who is working on your case to discuss your concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues. If a fee earner is unable to resolve a non-formal complaint to your satisfaction it then becomes a “formal complaint”. The complaint should be addressed to Daniel Milligan, Complaints Officer at the above registered address. Alternatively, email daniel@andersonslaw.co.uk . You will be sent a letter of acknowledgement and a Complaint Form which sets out the procedure and timescales for dealing with your complaint as follows;

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint and send you this copy of our complaint handling procedure. We will usually send this to you within 3 working days of receiving your complaint, which ideally we received in writing.

Mr Milligan will discuss your complaint with the person who dealt with your matter and ask to see the file of papers relating to it.

If Mr Milligan is the person dealing with the matter about which you have a complaint, Mr Les Saunders, the Senior Partner will deal with your complaint.  

We may invite you to attend a meeting to discuss your complaint if this will help to resolve the matter.

We will make every effort to provide a full written response to your complaint within 8 weeks of the date of our complaint acknowledgement letter. If we have had a meeting with you to clarify the nature of the complaint, you will normally receive this letter within 21 working days of the meeting. This letter will include our suggested resolution to your complaint. If we are not able to meet this time frame, we will write to explain why and indicate when a full response and resolution will be made.  

Where the person dealing with the complaint is on holiday, we will try to deal with as much of the complaint as we can in his or her absence but it may be necessary to await his or her return from holiday and we trust that you will understand that.

Where the complaint is solely about costs or charging (invoices) the Practice Manager will also be asked to assist by providing financial information.

If the complaint is about a technical area of the law where substantial expertise is required, the Senior Partner will liaise with the person in the firm who has the relevant expertise.

If we think that your complaint amounts to an allegation of negligence and we think this may be correct, we are required to tell you and advise you to consult other solicitors. We are also required to immediately notify our insurers.  

Our insurers may allow us to continue to handle your complaint or, under the terms of our insurance policy, may instruct their own solicitors, at which point they would normally tell us to ask you to make future contact through your own solicitors or directly to our insurer’s solicitors. You will be informed if that happens.

If we think your claim is justified or reasonable, we may offer to:-

- do further work at no charge to put matters right and/or
- reduce or waive our bill and/or
- pay you compensation.
- allocate your matter to another person to deal with  

We will discuss and agree with you the resolution to your complaint and usually confirm the details of this in writing within 3 working days of the agreement.

If your complaint has still not been handled to your satisfaction after following the steps above, you have the right to refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman.

The Legal Ombudsman can help you if we are unable to resolve your complaint ourselves. They will look at your complaint independently and it will not affect how we handle your case.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to deal with it providing you have allowed us up to 8 weeks to resolve your complaint.  If you wish to raise your complaint with the Legal Ombudsman you must do so within 12 months of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within 12 months of you realising that there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within 6 months of our final response to you regarding the complaint.

Contact details
Visit: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Call: 0300 555 0333 between 9.00 to 17.00.

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6177, Slough, SL1 0EH

What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour;

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.

To see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, you can visit their website at

https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/