Complaints
SHEPHERD HARRIS & CO. COMPLAINTS POLICY
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We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us improve our standards.
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Our complaints procedure
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If you have a complaint, please refer to the original client care letter you will have received which will indicate the particular supervisor who has responsibility for your file. You can then write to him/her with your complaint. It is always better to put the complaint in writing rather than over the telephone so that there is no misunderstanding about what your complaint relates to.
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What will happen next?
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1. The Supervisor will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint. You can expect to receive that acknowledgment within 2 days of receiving your complaint.
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2. We will record your complaint in our central register. We will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.
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3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps: a) We may ask the member of staff who acted for you to discuss your complaint with us.
b) The Supervisor concerned will in any event review your file.
4. We will then write to you with our observations on your complaint That letter should be sent to you within 14 days of receiving your complaint,
5. If you are dissatisfied with the response, please write in further and your letter will be reviewed by the Supervisor concerned,
6. If you are still dissatisfied, you can write to us again and the matter will then be reviewed by a Director in this firm, whose final response will be notified to you within 21 days. If we have to change any of the time scales referred to above, we will let you know and explain why.
7. If you remain unhappy with our response then you can refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent complaints body established under the Legal Services Act, who can investigate complaints about the legal service you have received from us.
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From 1 April 2023, the Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within a year of you realising there was a concern. The requirement to refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you remains the same.
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You can contact the Legal Ombudsman by:
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
Email on enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ
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Please note that the Ombudsman is there to deal with concerns about the level of service received. Where there are more serious concerns that a solicitor or solicitor’s firm have been involved in professional misconduct then reports can also be made to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the regulator of solicitors and solicitor firms. This could be for quite unusual and serious acts of misconduct such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristics. Obviously, we do not anticipate any such problems arising and would ask that you notify the matter supervisor straight away if you have any such concerns. You can find out more about the Solicitors Regulation Authority including their contact details and professional conduct rules on their website: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor