Complaints > How will you handle my complaint?

How will you handle my complaint?

How we handle complaints

After reading the information available on this webpage, if you think we may be able to help you then you should contact us using the Complaint Enquiry Form.

Once we receive your complaint, we will assess it and see whether it is one requiring priority action.  

We will contact you to seek more information if we need it and discuss the matter with you, and check what you are hoping to achieve.  We will let you know if we don’t think that we will be able to help you.

If that is the case, we can try and provide you with some information to assist you sort your concerns out yourself or with someone else.

If we can try and help, we will usually contact the lawyer and discuss the matter with them next.  They will be told that you have contacted us about them and will need to be given details about your concerns, and about what you are hoping to achieve.

We will then work with you and your lawyer to try and informally resolve your concerns.

We may also investigate the matter further if we need to, with the aim of helping you and your lawyer reach an agreement on an outcome.  If that is not possible, we may be able to make a decision.

In a small number of cases, a more lengthy and time consuming investigation might be needed if we decide it is appropriate.  If that is the case, we will let you know. However, the decision about whether further investigation is required is up to us.
 
If we have serious concerns as a result of the investigation, we may take some form of disciplinary action against the lawyer.  If we are considering that option, we will let you know.
 
While how we handle a complaint is up to us, we will; however, always work do what we can to try and resolve all complaints as quickly as possible.
 
If you have feedback about the way your concerns have been handled, or the outcome, then we will let you know what you may be able to do next.