Complaints Policy

We are committed to providing a high quality legal service to all clients. If something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will assist us to improve our standards.

Our complaints procedure.

Our complaints procedure is designed to address concerns and complaints made by our clients and service users who are not satisfied with the service which they have received. It may also be used where there is a concern or complaint by someone who is not a client or service user, who feels that there has been a regulatory or conduct irregularity.

Our complaints procedure will not apply to situations, for example, where the court has made a ruling with which you do not agree (which may be the subject of an appeal to the court), where you are not a client and are dissatisfied by the service we have given to our client (unless there is some clear regulatory breach or breach of the Solicitor’s Code of Conduct) or where the subject matter of your complaint is outside of the reasonable control of Behr & Co.

Upon receiving a formal complaint, a partner in the firm will investigate the matter. This will usually be the partner in the firm responsible for supervision of the lawyer or staff member who acted for you. If the person acting for you was one of the partners, this will be another partner in the firm. Jason Hall and Rhiannon James are all partners in the firm who have responsibility for complaints.

Preliminary stage.

If there is a matter on which you feel that you have not been given the service or advice which you feel you should have been, the first stage is to raise it with the lawyer or staff member acting for you. Often, areas of dissatisfaction arise where there has been a miscommunication or a misunderstanding. You may wish, at this stage, to ask the person you are dealing with to raise your concern informally with a partner in the firm, in order to get a second opinion or to review the matter. If so, a partner will reply to you after consultation with the lawyer of staff member acting for you.

Stage 1 complaint.

If matters cannot be resolved with the lawyer of staff member acting for you, or if you do not feel that you can raise the issue with them for some reason, you may make a formal complaint. Any formal complaint must be made (preferably, but not necessarily in writing) to a partner of the firm. It may assist, if you are able, if this is by way of a hard copy letter or email, simply in order to avoid any possibility of confusion later. If you do not wish to put your complaint in writing or if any written complaint appears to us to be ambiguous, we may ask you for clarification of your complaint before investigating. If your complaint is by email, a partner will respond as soon as practicable - this is because due to the obligations partners have outside the office at court and elsewhere, an email to them may not be accessed for some days after receipt. If you want to send your complaint by email, you should copy it to each of the partners, to increase the likelihood that it can be accessed as early as possible. The email addresses for the partners are:

jason@behr.co.uk for Jason Hall, and

rhiannon@behr.co.uk  for Rhiannon James.

It would be helpful if you make it clear in your letter that you are making a complaint, but it is our policy to treat all expressions of dissatisfaction which have not been resolved in accordance with our complaints procedure.

Upon receiving your complaint, we will:

1. send you a letter of acknowledgement within five working days, enclosing a copy of our complaints procedure and letting you know the name of the partner who will be dealing with the matter. If necessary, we will ask you to expand or explain your concerns if these are not clear from your initial letter,
2. record your complaint in our central register at the same time as sending your acknowledgement, and open a separate file reference specifically for dealing with the complaint,
3. if we have asked for further details we will acknowledge your further letter as in the first paragraph above.

Once we have all the information to deal with your complaint, we will start an internal investigation. This will normally involve the partner investigating the matter speaking to the lawyer who originally acted and examining your file. He or she will then send you a detailed written reply including if appropriate his or her suggestions for resolving the matter. You should expect to receive this within 10 working days of receiving your complaint or of your letter with further details if we have requested this. If the matter is complex or if the investigation needs more time to complete, we will let you know.

The investigating partner may offer a meeting with you to discuss your complaint and our suggestions for resolution. If you choose to take up this offer he or she will write again to you within three working days of the meeting to confirm what took place and any agreed solutions.

Stage 2 complaint.

If you are still not satisfied with the conclusion of the investigating partner, you can let us know. It is best if this is by way of a hard copy letter, but you may wish to email using the same procedure as above. We will then arrange for a further review of our decision, usually by the other partner of the firm if they have not already been involved in the matter complained of or the work leading to it. We will let you know how this further review is to proceed within five working days of receipt of your further letter. We will include in our reply a time estimate for the further review. If the matter is complex or if the review subsequently needs more time to complete, we will let you know.

At the conclusion of the further review we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.

Stage 3 complaint.

If you are still not satisfied with the outcome, or if it is more than eight weeks since you first complained, you may refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ. The Legal Ombudsman’s telephone number is 0300 555 0333. Further information about the Ombudsman’s powers and responsibilities is available at www.legalombudsman.org.uk. Any complaint referred to the Legal Ombudsman must be made within a year of the act / omission complained of (or within a year of the date when you should have become aware of it).

Alternative dispute resolution.

Alternative complaints bodies such as Ombudsman Services, ProMediate and Small Claims Mediation exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme.

However, we do not currently agree to use this Alternative Dispute Resolution service in view of the availability of the independent Legal Ombudsman Service established under the Legal Services Act 2007. We are bound by our Regulatory Code to comply with the Legal Ombudsman.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our 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 raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Details can be found on their website www.sra.org.uk/