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Complaints Procedure
Gillen De Alwis Solicitors is committed to high quality legal advice and client care. If you are unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received, or about our charges, please contact our Complaints
Our aim is always to provide all our clients an efficient and effective service as our clients are of utmost importance to us and we trust that you will be pleased with the work we do for you.
If you have any problem with the service, we have provided for you then please let us know, this includes any complaints regarding the firm’s bill. We aim to resolve any problem quickly and we operate an internal complaints handling system to help to resolve the problem. Please raise your concern in the first instance with the person handling your case. If you still have queries or concerns, we ask that you direct the complaint to the Department Supervisor/Head. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, please escalate your query to Niamh Matthews-Murphy who is the Complaints’ Director to whom any difficulty may be reported. She can be contacted by e-mail niamh@gdasolicitors.com. She is based at 23 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London, W1J 6HE.
In the first instance you must try to resolve your complaint through our complaints handling process. If you are unhappy with the outcome, or if we have failed to resolve your complaint within eight weeks, and we acted for you as an individual, small business, charity, club or trust, you can escalate your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. They are contactable as follows:
Legal Ombudsman
- PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ
- T: 0300 555 0333
- E: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
The legal ombudsman’s time limit for accepting a complaint is six years from the date of the act/omission, and three years from when the complainant should have known about the issue. If you would like a copy of our written complaint’s procedure, please let us know and we will send it to you.
In addition to your right to object to our bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, you may also have a right to apply to the court for an assessment of our bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. Please note that the Legal Ombudsman may not deal with your complaint regarding your bill if you have applied to the court for assessment of that bill.
If the services we have provided relate to proceedings in a Court or Tribunal, you may additionally be entitled to have the amount of our fees checked or assessed under Rules of Court and regulations applying to the particular proceedings, or under the inherent jurisdiction of the Tribunal before which the proceedings have taken, or are taking place.
If all or part of our bill remains unpaid whilst you dispute it, the firm may be entitled to charge interest.