How to make a complaint against your solicitor

Complaints can be made against solicitors for a variety of reasons. The most common causes of complaint are with regard to solicitors misleading clients over fees, when a client believes that they have received poor service from the lawyer handling their case, alongside more general upset regarding the way in which clients and their cases were treated by their solicitor. In fact, complaints can be made against other peoples solicitor as well as your own solicitor.

In Britian, the Legal Complaints Service is the body that deals with all of the complaints brought against lawyers in this country. The LCS also use the name The Legal Ombudsman. The LCS strongly advise in all cases, whatever the complaint relates to, that all clients put their complaint in a letter to the law firm in question as a first step. If the dispute cannot be settled by the law firm then the LCS strongly advises putting this in writing again, only this time to the most senior party in the law firm in question. If the issue still cannot be resolved, then there are a number of official avenues to take to have the matter resolved. The avenue that you take depends on the kind of complaint you are bringing.

Solicitor conduct and negligence

If you believe that you have received poor service from your court representative, or that your case has been mishandled, you can refer the matter to the LCS. It is their job to examine claims of poor service, misconduct and negligence made against solicitors in this country.

In many cases, the Legal Complaints Service will not handle your complaint until you have first tried to resolve the issue with the law firm in question. They have the authority to, amongst other things, force your solicitor to reduce your bill, as well as making sure that your lawyer pays you suitable compensation up to a maximum limit of 15,000 GBP. You can find more details about complaining to the Legal Complaints Service at their website.

Overchargings

If you think that you have been misled over charges or have been overcharged by your lawyer then you have two courses of action to choose from. The first option is to put a request to your solicitor to obtain a remuneration certificate from the Legal Complaints Service. The Legal Complaints Service then then look into the work undertaken by your lawyer and figure out what would be a fair amount. They can then decrease the bill or leave it as is, but they are not legally allowed to increase it. This is also a free service. The other options is that you can apply for a court assessment, which means that instead of the LCS the courts themselves check to see that your bill is fair. But this is a complicated assessment process and will involve you paying court costs.