The complaint process

Making contact

Contact us using the Complaint Enquiry Form if you think we can help you with your complaint.

We will assess it first, and see if it requires priority action.

We will contact you for more information if we need it. We may discuss the matter with you, and check what you hope to achieve.

When we can’t help

We will let you know if it’s not a matter we can help with. However, we will try to give you information so you can sort it out yourself, or with someone else.

When we can help

We will usually contact the lawyer and discuss the matter with them next. We will tell them you have contacted us about them. Details about your concerns and what you hope to achieve will help us discuss it more usefully.

We may:

  • work with you and your lawyer to try to negotiate a resolution
  • investigate the matter further, with the aim of helping you and your lawyer reach an agreement or an outcome
  • make a decision if agreement is not reached
  • start a longer, more thorough investigation where we decide that is appropriate.

Further investigation

We will let you know if we decide any further investigation is needed. That decision is up to us and will depend on the circumstances.

We may consider some form of disciplinary action against the lawyer following the investigation.  You may have limited involvement in the case if this is what we decide to do.

How we handle a complaint is up to us, but our intention is to resolve all complaints as quickly as possible.

After the complaint

If you have feedback or questions, you should first contact the staff member who handled your case.

When we make a final decision about a complaint we will let you know whether you can seek an internal review of that decision.

Any request for an internal review has to be made within 30 days of the decision. We will then see whether we should conduct an internal review.  That decision will be made by someone other than the original decision maker.

More information about internal reviews is available in the following Guideline issued by the Commissioner for Uniform Legal Services Regulation.