Lock & Marlborough

Complaints Procedure

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients.
If something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it.
This will help us to improve our standards.
If you have a complaint, please write to us with the details.

Within 7 days of receipt of your letter, we will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint, asking you to confirm or explain the details set out in so far as you have not already done so, and confirming that an investigation is starting.
We will let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with the matter.
We will record your complaint in our central register and then start to investigate it.

In most cases, you may expect to receive a substantive reply to your complaint within 14 days of the start of the investigation.
If the investigation is likely to take more than 14 days, you will be notified.

If, after receiving our reply, you are not happy with the response given, the person investigating the complaint will consider the matter further and will either invite you to the Office to discuss the matter, and hopefully resolve your complaint, or will refer the matter to another member of the firm, who will review the complaint and write to you.

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.

• Another member of the firm will review the investigator's decision within 10 days.
• We will, within 5 days, invite you to agree to independent mediation.
  We will let you know how long this process will take.

We will let you know the result of the review within 5 days of the end of the review.
At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
If we change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

Legal Ombudsman

If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint.
Tel: 0300 555 0333
E-mail: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk

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 or within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are complaining or when you should reasonably have been aware of it.

SRA

If you think we have behaved dishonestly, or have concerns about our ethics or integrity, you can refer the matter to the SRA
Tel: 0370 606 2555
Post: Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN
https://www.sra.org.uk