Facing a complaint?

As a solicitor you have a professional obligation to deal with a complaint made to you by your client. We hope to assist by providing information that should help you when faced with a complaint.

Practical hints and tips when things go wrong...

For most clients using a solicitor is a positive experience, but occasionally things go wrong and a client complains. To assist you when this happens, we?ve produced a quick-reference guide that highlights:

• how to maximise the chances of resolving a complaint in-house
• the benefits of doing so
• what happens if the matter comes to the Legal Complaints Service (LCS)
• how to avoid complaints arising

To make this guide as useful as possible, we've concentrated on general areas of complaints, which we see affecting firms of all sizes. The guide is free to download (PDF 314Kb), or you can contact us and order printed copies for the office.

To accompany the guide we've designed a downloadable checklist (PDF 33Kb) for you to print out and use with any internal complaints files.

We have provided an example of a firms complaints handling procedure (PDF 72K) to help you.

Remember the time limit for raising a complaint, is generally six months from the end of the firm's retainer or six months of the customer finding out about a problem. Additional information can be found within our Frequently asked questions on time limits.