Complaints Policy
At BlueLion Law, we treat complaints seriously and strive to resolve them efficiently, transparently and fairly.
CONTACT DETAILS
BlueLion Law
79 College Road
London HA1 1BD
Telephone: 020 7112 8616
E-mail: [email protected]
COMPLAINTS STAGES
- Communication with lawyer
Your first point of contact will be the lawyer or legal executive assigned to your case. The lawyer will consider your case fairly and efficiently, taking into consideration the seriousness of your complaint. Should a resolution not be reached, the lawyer may pass the complaint to the senior member of the firm or request a written formal complaint be sent to our offices.
- Communication with department manager
The lawyer will be in contact with you to discuss your complaint and try reaching a resolution. Failing this you will be asked to put your complaint in writing or electronic mail with full details of the complaint to start the formal procedure.
- Acknowledging your complaint
We will send you a written or an electronic acknowledgement of your complaint. We reserve the right to decline to consider a complaint that is made more than six months after the complainant became aware of the cause of the complaint. However, we have discretion to waive this time limit and still undertake the complaint. We will confirm to you in writing or electronic mail if we are prepared to consider a complaint that has been made outside of the time scale of six months.
- Investigating your complaint
Your complaint will be investigated by the lawyer and overseen by the senior partner. We endeavour to ensure that the person investigating the complaint has not been directly involved in the matter to which the complaint relates. The senior partner and the senior solicitor have the authority to settle complaints.
- Responding to your complaint
Within four weeks of receiving your full written complaint, BlueLion Law will send you either:
(a) An acknowledgement, which explains that BlueLion Law is in receipt of your complaint in addition to indicating when BlueLion Law will make further contact with you; or
(b) A response setting out BlueLion Law’s full investigation of your complaint.
Within eight weeks of receiving your complaint, BlueLion Law will send you either: [MAKE FORMATTING CONSISTENT WITH ABOVE]
(a) A response setting out BlueLion Law’s full investigation of your complaint; or
(b) A holding response (i) explaining why BlueLion Law is not in a position to provide you with a response, giving reasons for the further delay and stating when we expect to be able to provide you with the stated information; or (ii) informing you that you may refer the handling of the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman if you are dissatisfied with the delay.
- Redress
Where we decide that redress is an appropriate solution to the complaint, BlueLion Law will provide you with fair compensation for any acts or omissions for which we are responsible and comply with any offer of redress which the complainant accepts. Appropriate redress will not always involve financial redress. It may involve an apology or an offer to redo the work.
- Final response
If after receiving our response you are still unhappy we will refer our decision to our Senior Partner who will then send you a final response.
- If you are still unhappy
If you are still dissatisfied with our Final Response, or if a complaint is not resolved after eight weeks, you may refer the complaint to:
Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough SL1 0EH
[email protected]
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
The Legal Ombudsman will only intervene once all steps of the firm’s complaints procedure have been followed. The Legal Ombudsman can review the handling of the complaint and investigate the complaint further, ultimately making a determination about the complaint and giving binding directions about how the complaint should be resolved. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers. The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within one year of you raising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you. Further information is available at: http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/consumer/index.html
