Complaints

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need our clients to tell us about it. This will help improve our standards. Whenever possible, please raise any initial client care problems with the person acting on your case to give them the opportunity of resolving matters with you. Often, matters can be quickly resolved in this way.

If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received or about the bill, please contact Dominic Nurse, by telephone on 0113 243 2288 or by post to our office at Oxford House, Oxford Row, Leeds, LS1 3BE or by email to d.nurse@henryhyams.com. Mr Nurse will pass your complaint to the director in charge of the department involved in your complaint.

Our Procedures

a. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint within five working days enclosing a copy of this procedure and ask you to confirm or explain any details.

b. We will then record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint.

c. We will investigate and respond to your complaint within 8 weeks in the following way:

i. We will discuss your complaint with the member of staff who acted for you. We will ask them, where appropriate, to respond to the complaint.

ii. We will examine their reply and the information contained in your file.

d. We will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter.

e. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you can write to us again. We will then arrange to review our decision. This will happen in one of the following ways:

I. We will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it.

II. Dominic Nurse, will respond to you within ten days

f. Following the review, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

g. If you are still not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider the complaint. Contact details are as follows:

Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH

0300 555 0333
*enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Normally you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within the following timescales:

a) Within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned, or

b) Within one year of you realising there was a concern.

c) You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you.

We would hope that this does not become necessary and that we can resolve matters between ourselves. If this is not the case however, we would be happy to provide you with the necessary information to make such a complaint.

If we have to change any of the above timescales we will let you know and explain why.

Alternative complaints bodies (such as ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm consent to use such a scheme. In the event that you wish to use an alternative complaint body you should advise us and we will then state if we agree.

The complaints procedure also includes complaints arising concerning our bill. There may also be a right to object to the bill by applying 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 applied to the Court for assessment of that bill.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) can help you if you are concerned about a solicitor’s behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can find information about raising your concerns with the SRA at www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/