We are committed to providing an excellent standard of service to our clients. We value feedback from clients greatly because it helps us to continually improve our service. If you do not feel that you are receiving excellent client service, or that something could be improved, please do tell us about it. If we have fallen short of the high standards we have set for ourselves then we would like the opportunity to put things right.
Wherever possible it would be helpful if you could discuss any feedback or concerns with the lawyer dealing with your matter informally first, as they or their line managers may be able to resolve your concerns without the need for a formal complaint.
However, if we cannot resolve your concern informally, we will escalate your complaint to an outsourced complaints handler. Whilst the complaints handler is retained by us, we find that an external review of any complaint by someone not previously involved in the matter can result in a thorough review of the complaint and a swifter resolution for all parties.
To enable us to investigate and provide a thorough response to your concerns, we will need to form a good understanding of the issues. We would welcome hearing from you by email or by post with a brief explanation of:
Please address your concerns to: complaints@deanwilson.co.uk
Complaints, Dean Wilson LLP, 165 Dyke Road, Brighton, BN3 1TL
We will not charge you for investigating and responding to your complaint and any subsequent appeal.
Your complaint will be investigated and handled independently of your legal matter. This means that if your legal matter is ongoing it will continue to progress as normal and will not be affected by the complaints procedure, assuming no conflict of interests has arisen and that you continue to comply with the terms of our engagement as set out in our client care letter and terms of business.
Our terms of business provide that our invoices remain payable regardless of the investigation of any complaint.
However, please be assured that if the outcome of any complaint investigation concludes that any adjustment or reduction in costs should be made, any reimbursement will be paid promptly at that time.
We will aim to conclude our investigation and provide our Response to Complaint as quickly as possible. Although we will always aim for sooner, the process may take up to eight weeks from receipt of your complaint.
In exceptional circumstances it may be necessary to extend these timescales. If this occurs, we will let you know in writing and will try to agree any variations with you first.
We regret any dissatisfaction which our clients experience and, if our investigation concludes that our service has fallen below our usual high standards, we will not hesitate to apologise. We may also make any proposals that we consider appropriate to resolve the complaint. This can include compensation for any loss or distress and inconvenience we consider has been caused by any unreasonable service identified.
We can also consider agreeing a bill reduction or taking agreed steps to put things right for you. Where we recognise that the service provided has fallen below the standards we aspire to, we will also take steps internally to ensure that any problems that you have experienced will not reoccur. We will ask you to let us know whether we have succeeded in resolving your concerns, or if you remain dissatisfied.
If you remain dissatisfied after exhausting our complaints process, or in the unlikely event that you have not received a Response to Complaint within eight weeks of our receiving your complaint, you may be entitled to complain to the Legal Ombudsman about our service. The Legal Ombudsman will normally expect you to have exhausted this complaints procedure before referring to them.
The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints independently and accessing the service will not affect how we handle your case (if ongoing).
Most private individuals and smaller organisational or business clients will be able to make use of the Legal Ombudsman scheme. The Legal Ombudsman’s Scheme Rules, which can be accessed on the Legal Ombudsman website, do exclude complaints from some larger organisational and business clients.
Time limits apply to the service, so if you do wish to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman you should not delay once our own complaints process has concluded. In certain circumstances the Legal Ombudsman may exercise discretion to consider a complaint out of time.
The general rule is that you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint and either:
You can contact the Legal Ombudsman or find further information about who can use their service and when, via the details set out below.
www.legalombudsman.org.uk
T 0300 555 0333 between 9.00 am to 5.00 pm
E enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Post Legal Ombudsman PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
If you are complaining about our bill, in addition to referring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, you may be entitled to ask the court to assess your costs under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. However, be aware that if you have done so, the Legal Ombudsman may not be able to consider a complaint about the same issues.
The Legal Ombudsman service considers complaints about the quality of legal services that client's receive. In the unlikely event that you have concerns that a solicitor or the firm have been involved in professional misconduct then it may be appropriate for you to refer this to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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 the Standards and Regulations that govern the conduct of solicitors and law firms, on their website: www.sra.org.uk.
Other ADR services providers exist that are competent to deal with complaints in the legal sector, including ProMediate. However, Dean Wilson LLP believes that the Legal Ombudsman offers our clients the most appropriate forum to seek resolution of their concerns. Therefore we have not adopted an alternative ADR procedure and do not agree to use another ADR organisation instead of the Legal Ombudsman.
