Paragon Law Complaints Policy
We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.
If you have a complaint, contact us with the details. We have eight weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this time you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman.
What will happen next?
1. Our Legal Services Director, Kirin Abbas, or the appropriate Head of Department, will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out. You can expect to receive our letter within three days of receiving your complaint. At the same time, we will record your complaint in our central register.
2. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve the following steps: -
- The appropriate Head of Department will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to them on the issues raised in your complaint. This will be done within 5 days.
- The Head of Department will then examine their response, review the information on file and, if necessary, speak to them. This will be done within 3 days of receiving their reply and the file.
3. A full written response to your complaint will be sent out to you within a further 5 days, outlining the action to be taken to address the issues raised, proposing appropriate remedies, and inviting you to discuss the matter further if you feel this will help to resolve the complaint.
4. If a meeting is requested, within 2 days of the meeting this will be followed up with a letter confirming any outstanding agreed action.
5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you should contact us again. We will then arrange to review our decision and another Director of the firm will review the original decision within 14 days.
6. 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.
7. We have eight weeks to consider your complaint. If we have not resolved it within this timescale you may complain to the Legal Ombudsman.
If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can ask the Legal Ombudsman at:
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH
to consider the complaint. 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 1 year of the act or omission which you are complaining occurring (or 1 year from when you should reasonably have been aware of it). Please be aware that the Legal Ombudsman only accepts complaints from individuals and small businesses, charities or associations. For further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman on 0300 555 0333 or at [email protected].
Alternative complaints bodies (such as ProMediate of Brow Farm, Top Road, Frodsham, Cheshire WA6 6SP, 01928 732455, www.promediate.co.uk) exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and we wish to use such a scheme. Because, unlike the Legal Ombudsman, such services must be paid for and they are not binding on either you or us, it will be unusual for us to agree to the use of such a service.
In the event that your complaint relates to our conduct or behaviour, then you may choose to report a solicitor or the firm to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. You may use the SRA website https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/, email [email protected] or you can post a report to Solicitors Regulatory Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN.
If we have to change any of the timescales above we will let you know and explain why.