Complaints Procedure

Jacklyn Dawson is committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all its clients. As such, should something go wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards. We take all expressions of dissatisfaction very seriously.

The person with overall responsibility for complaints is Jonathan Hine, a Solicitor and Partner in the firm. From time to time he may be assisted by Julie James, also a Solicitor and Partner in the firm.

Our Complaints Procedure

 If you have a complaint, please contact us in writing with the details as soon as possible.

What will happen next? 

On receipt of any complaint we will record it in our central register and open a separate file in respect of it. This will be done by our complaints partner, within 5 working days of receipt of the complaint.

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint by sending you a letter confirming receipt within 5 working days thereafter. In that letter we will let you know the name and status of the person who will handle the matter.

The Complaints Partner will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps: -

• The file giving rise to the complaint will be obtained by our Complaints Partner within 5 working days of our acknowledging receipt of your complaint.

• An initial response to the complaint will be sought from the member of staff who acted for you within 14 working days thereafter

• On receipt of the initial response from the staff member concerned, our Complaints Partner will consider the reply and the information on the subject file. At this stage it may be necessary for our Complaints Partner to speak to the member of staff who acted for you about the matter in more detail, to gain a clearer understanding of the issues raised and what has occurred. This will take up to 14 working days from receiving the reply from the member of staff concerned.

Where it appears expeditious, necessary or of assistance to the Complaints Partner, he or she may then invite you to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. If this is thought appropriate, it will be done within 14 working days of the completion of the investigation stage.

Within 5 working days of any meeting held as described at 4 above, our Complaints Partner will write to you to confirm what took place at that meeting and any resolution of the complaint that has been agreed with you.

If you do not wish to attend a meeting, a meeting is not possible or, in the view of our Complaints Partner a meeting is not necessary, a detailed reply to your complaint will be sent to you within 14 working days of our Complaints Partner completing the investigation in to the issues you have raised. This will include suggestions for resolving the matter.

At this stage, if you are not satisfied with the decision reached by our Complaints Partner, you may contact us again and ask us to review any initial decision made on your complaint. We will then arrange for our Complaints Partner’s decision to be reviewed. We will do this in one of the following ways:-

• Another Partner of the firm will review our Complaints Partner’s decision within 14 working days following receipt of your request for a review of our initial decision. Or,

• We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint. We will make this request within 14 working days of receipt of your request for a review of our initial decision. We will let you know how long this process will take as soon as we are informed of the timescale by either our local Law Society or the alternate firm of local solicitors we approach. Or,

• We will invite you to agree to independent mediation of your complaint within 14 working days following receipt of your request for a review of our initial decision. We will let you know how long this process will take once we have ascertained the timescale from the mediator concerned.

The Partner conducting the review will let you know the result of that review within 14 working days of completing the same, where this is done internally. At this stage the response to your request for a review must be considered our final position on the matter. We will write to you confirming our final view and explain our reasons for reaching that view. At this stage we will also provide you with the details of an approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) body that is competent to deal with complaints about legal services. The matter can be referred to them if we both agree to use the scheme. We do not agree to use the scheme but are obliged from 1^st October 2015, under European DIRECTIVE 2013/11/EU, to make you aware of an ADR approved body.

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint, you can also refer the matter to:

The Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

Website:         www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Tel:                  0300 555 0333

Email:             enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

and ask that body to consider your complaint.

For the Legal Ombudsman to deal with your complaint the problem must ordinarily have occurred after 5^th October 2010.

If the problem occurred on or before 5^th October 2010, or you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint on or before that date, then the Ombudsman will not usually be able to deal with your complaint. If you are unsure about these time limits and how they apply to your matter, please contact the Legal Ombudsman’s office, using the contact details shown above, to clarify the position.

Subject to the above Scheme Rules and the Legal Ombudsman’s discretion to extend the time limits, you will need to bring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint

From the 1^st of April 2023, the Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned, or within a year of your realising there was a concern.

Please note

• If your complaint is specifically about our bill, you have the right to object to it and apply for an assessment of it underpart III of the Solicitors Act 1974. If you should choose to exercise this right, and the court is assessing our bill, you may be unable to use the Legal Ombudsman service.
• If you are complaining as a business client, unless you are a “micro  business” (as defined by the European Union), you may not be able to use the Legal Ombudsman scheme, and should check the guidance on Legal Ombudsman’s website.
• If you refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman as a trustee/personal representative (executor/administrator) or beneficiary of the estate/trust of a person who, before they died, had not referred the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman the period runs from when the deceased should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint; and when the complainant (or the deceased) should reasonably have known there was a cause for complaint will be assessed on the basis of the complainant’s (or deceased’s) own knowledge, disregarding what the complainant (or the deceased) might have been told if he/she had sought advice.
• If the Ombudsman considers there are exceptional circumstances (e.g. serious illness or you were still within the time limits when you made your initial complaint to them) then he/she may extend any of the above time limits to the extent that he/she considers fair.

For information on how and when a complaint can be made to the SRA please click on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Digital Badge in the footer to our website

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

April 2021