Our Complaints Policy

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 to improve our standards. We regard it as an opportunity to monitor and improve our quality of service. We will investigate your concerns objectively and try to find and suggest a positive and speedy solution.

Our Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint please contact one of our Complaints Handlers, Esther Gould – egould@wolferstans.com 01752 292209 or James Barclay – jbarclay@wolferstans.com or 01752 292373. It is very helpful if you can initially summarise your complaint in writing to us but if there are circumstances which make it difficult for you to do so we will be pleased to speak to you.

If we have to change any of the responsibilities or the timescales set out below we will let you know and explain why.

What Will Happen Next?

1. Within five working days we will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain any details. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. This may be the Head of Department which dealt with the matter, Esther Gould or James Barclay.

2. We will record your complaint in our Central Register and open a file for your complaint. When appropriate we will investigate your complaint by examining the relevant file.

3. We will consider your complaint and will provide a response to it within ten business days of our acknowledgement of your complaint. If the matter is complex and it takes longer to deal with your complaint, we will contact you within that period of ten business days to give you an approximate timescale of when you can expect a response. If we believe it would be helpful, we may suggest a meeting.

4. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied or we are unable to resolve your complaint, you can request that your complaint is reviewed by our Managing Partner, Alisa Willows. We would generally aim to do this within 10 working days of referral.

5. This will usually happen by the Managing Partner reviewing the decision of Esther Gould or James Barclay, however in appropriate cases we may deal with the review in one of the following ways:

We may arrange for someone else in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it, for instance if it is necessary for the reviewer to have specialist knowledge in a certain area of law. If this is appropriate, we will let you know the name of the person who will be reviewing the decision.

We may invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know more details about this and how long this process will take, if this is an appropriate option.

6. We will let you know the result of the review within 5 working days at the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

7. If you object to a bill, you have the right to apply to the Court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. The Legal Ombudsman may not consider a complaint about a bill if you have already applied to the Court for assessment of the bill.

8. If, after following our internal Complaints Procedure you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) about your complaint. The LeO has time limits for dealing with complaints. You should contact them:

After eight weeks of referring your complaint to us, if it has not been resolved to your satisfaction

Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint and six years from the date of act/omission (or three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint (if the act took place more than six years ago)).

Their contact details are:
Telephone: 0300 555 0333 from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Address: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

We hope that this will not be necessary and aim to work with you to resolve the matter before that stage.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can raise your concern with the Solicitors Regulation Authority via the website.