Our complaints procedure
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 so that we can put matters right as quickly and effectively as possible. Also, this will help us to improve our standards.
If you have a complaint about any aspect of the service you have received or about a bill, please contact us on complaints@harcusparker.co.uk with a short summary of your complaint.
What will happen next?
We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint and provide you with a copy of this procedure. At the same time, if we need further information from you to enable us to deal with your complaint, we will let you know.
We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to the firm’s Complaints Partner, Damon Parker, Chief Operating Officer, Jacqueline Young, or another partner in the firm, who will conduct an investigation by reviewing your matter file and speaking to the partner and other members of staff who have been acting for you.
Mr Parker, Ms Young, or another partner of the firm, will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint, including our suggestions for resolving the matter, normally within 21 days of sending you our acknowledgement of your complaint or, if we have asked you for further information in order that we can deal with your complaint, within 21 days from receiving that information. At the same time, you may be invited to a meeting to discuss, and hopefully resolve, your complaint. If complex issues are involved then we will agree with you a realistic and fair timeframe for us to resolve your complaint satisfactorily. We will aim to provide our final response to any complaint within 8 weeks of the date of your complaint.
If your complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction once we have issued our final response, we will provide you with the name of an approved alternative dispute resolution body which would be competent to deal with the complaint. We will also let you know whether we agree to use the scheme operated by that body.
At this stage you may be able to refer the matter to the independent Legal Ombudsman:
- write to: PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH;
- email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk; or
- phone: 0300 555 0333.
Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six months of the date of our final written response on your complaint, and within one year of the act or omission that caused the complaint or, if outside this period, within one year of when you should reasonably have known about the relevant act or omission.
The Legal Ombudsman may refer your complaint to the SRA if they are not the correct body to consider the matter, as the Legal Ombudsman’s services are only available for certain types of complaints and complainants.
For full details, please visit: https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/helping-the-public/make-a-complaint/ and https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page.
Note also that if you are a client and your complaint is about our invoices, you may also apply to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors’ Act 1974. If all or part of any bill remains unpaid, we may be entitled to charge interest.
If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.