complaints POLICY

TW Law Solicitors is committed to a high quality of legal advice and client care. If you are unhappy about any aspect of the advice you have received or about your final bill of costs, please in the first instance refer the matter to the Solicitor dealing with your case who will be happy to discuss your concerns with you direct. Alternatively, you can contact Miss Anne Thompson on anne@tw-law.co.uk  or by post to this office address if you continue to be in any way concerned about the way in which the matter is being dealt with.

We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints. We have eight weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this time scale then you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman at: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167 Slough SL1 0EH; Tel: 0300 555 0333 or by email to enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint or within one year of the act of omission about which you are complaining occurring (or you becoming aware of it).

 

What will happen next?

We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out if necessary. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within two days of us receiving your complaint.

We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint. We will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.

We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps:-

• We will pass your complaint to our Client Care partner, within three days. If the complaint is about Miss Thompson, Miss Williams will investigate your complaint.
• The person investigating your complaint will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 5 days.
• She will then consider their reply and examine the file and the information in your complaint file. If necessary she may also speak to them. This will take up to three days from receiving their reply and the file.

We will then invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. We will do this within three days.

Within two days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you.

If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. We will do this within five days of completing the investigation.

At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decisions. This will happen in one of the following ways:-

• another partner of the firm will review the decision within 10 days.
• We will ask another local firm of Solicitors to review your complaint within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take
• We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within five days. We will let you know how long this process will take.

We will let you know the result of the review within five days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If you are still not satisfied you can contact the Legal Ombudsman, online details above, about your complaint.

If we have to change any of the above timescales, we will let you know and explain why.