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 us by post to our office at 56-58 Renshaw Street (First Floor), Liverpool L1 4EN, telephone 0151 708 8787 or email naeembaig@leidatbaig.co.uk. We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints as follows:
Compliance Officer for Legal Practice (COLP) – also referred to as the ‘Risk Manager’ Ibrar Hussain
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We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within seven days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
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We will investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our Client Care Director Ibrar Hussain who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.
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We will then invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. We will do this within 14 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
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Within seven days of that meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and to set out any solutions that have been agreed with you.
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If you do not want a meeting, or it is not possible, you will be sent a detailed written reply to your complaint, including the suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement latter.
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At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for another Director within the firm to review the decision.
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We will write to you within 14 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
Complaints to SRA or legal ombudsman
If you are not satisfied with the action that we have taken you are also entitled to contact the legal ombudsman at Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH, telephone: 0300555033, website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk.
The Legal Ombudsman is an independent ombudsman scheme that resolves complaints about lawyers. It was set up under the Legal Services
Act 2007.
The Legal Ombudsman will normally only consider a complaint after the complainant has made the complaint to the practice and the practice has failed to resolve it to the complainant’s satisfaction.
Once a complaint is referred to the Legal Ombudsman, a caseworker at will investigate the complaint and make recommendations.
If the complainant and the lawyer accept these recommendations, then no further action will be taken. If either side does not agree with the recommendations, then the case can be taken to the Ombudsman for a decision. If the complainant accepts the decision then it is binding on the lawyer.
Please be aware that should you choose to complain to the Legal Ombudsman you should do this as soon as you can after trying to sort things out through our complaints procedure. You have up to six months to bring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman once the complaints procedure set out in this letter has been concluded.
There are also two additional relevant time limits;
Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint and within the following timescales:
• one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or
• one year from the date when the complainant should have realised that there was cause for complaint.
If you are unsure about anything you can call the legal ombudsman on 0300 555 0333.
What to do if you are unhappy with our behaviour
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help 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.
Visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.