Complaints Procedure
At Adel Jibs & Co Solicitors, our clients remain at the forefront of our priorities. We are committed to delivering impeccable service, focusing on understanding and meeting each client’s unique needs. If you have a complaint as outlined by the SRA (refer to www.sra.org.uk) and the Legal Ombudsman Scheme Rules, kindly direct it initially to the solicitor/ trainee solicitor or the paralegal responsible for your matters at Adel Jibs & Co Solicitors.
Procedure Steps:
- If you feel that your complaint has not been resolved adequately, please reach out to our designated complaints office, Adeleke Ajibola, either via adelekeajibola@adeljibs.co.uk or by post: 185 Angel Place Fore Street, Edmonton, London N18 2UD.
- We are committed to acknowledging your grievance promptly, usually within five working days, accompanied by a detailed outline of our complaints handling process. If possible, our acknowledgment will be coupled with the final response.
- You can expect to receive, within eight weeks of your complaint’s receipt:
- A conclusive response upholding the complaint, offering suitable redress when necessary, or rejecting the complaint and providing the reasons for the decision; or
- An interim response highlighting our inability to provide a final decision at that moment, detailing the reasons for the delay, and indicating the anticipated final response timeline.
4. Our responses will include information on escalating the matter to the Legal Ombudsman if you remain unsatisfied, providing all necessary contact details. It is crucial to remember that you must refer any grievances to the Legal Ombudsman within six months from the date of our final written feedback.
- Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint;
- No more than 1 year from the act/omission that lead to the complaint;
- No more than 1 year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint
The Legal Ombudsman and Assessment of Bills:
The Legal Ombudsman is reachable via phone at 0300 555 0333, email at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk, or post at PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ. It’s essential to exhaust our internal complaints procedure before approaching the Legal Ombudsman. Ensure that your complaint is referred within the necessary timeframes as set out by the Ombudsman. Please note that the Legal Ombudsman caters predominantly to individual members of the public and specific small enterprises, charities, clubs, associations, and trusts. Detailed information on this process can be found at http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk.
For concerns regarding billing, you hold the right to request the court’s assessment of a bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. If any portion of a bill remains unsettled, interest charges may apply. Please remember that the Legal Ombudsman might not process complaints about a bill if a court assessment request has been made concerning that bill.
Raising Concerns with the SRA:
If your grievances extend to our conduct, they can also be directed to the SRA. For comprehensive details, visit https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page.
Adel Jibs & Co Solicitors
185 Angel Place, Fore Street
London
N18 2UD
Telephone number: 02034173859
Email: clientcare@adeljibs.co.uk
What will happen next after you engage our services?
- We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and setting out our understanding of the issues you are concerned about.
- In that letter we will ask you to confirm or otherwise our understanding of the nature of your complaint. We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with the complaint.
- Once we record your complaint in our central register a file will be opened.
- We will investigate your complaint, and this will normally involve the listed steps below:
- The person dealing with your complaint will request your file of papers from the member of staff who acted in your case and will consider the information in your file of papers in the light of your complaint
- The person dealing with your complaint may ask the member of staff who acted for you to provide their response to your complaint. This response will be sent to the person dealing with the complaint.
- So as to hopefully resolve your complain, we may invite you to meet the member of staff and or the person investigating the complaints.
- In the event that such a meeting is convened, with 7 days of the meeting we will write to you to confirm what took place and ant solutions we have agreed with you.
- If you do not want a meeting or we do not feel a meeting is necessary or appropriate we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter.
- At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can contact us again. We will review the decision. This review may result in the a further proposal for settlement being made or may result in the original proposal being re-put.
- At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint. We will also give you contact information for The Legal Ombudsman. If you are still not satisfied you can contact them about your complaint.
The above procedure in total should not exceed 8 weeks. If this time scale needs to be amended we will contact you to let you know why.
The Legal Ombudsman Service
Should you wish to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman Service, they will require you to have already made your complaint to us and allowed us up to eight weeks to provide a full response. The Legal Ombudsman Service will require copies of your complaint and our response.
You can find useful guidance and resources on their website www.legalombudsman.org.uk (telephone 0300 555 0333; email enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk) including a template and guide to making a complaint if you haven’t already done so.
In addition we are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. They work with solicitors firms such as ours to make sure we comply with our Principles, to make sure we behave independently, fairly and with integrity to best serve the interests of our clients and the public interest. We welcome information about dishonesty or breaches of our Principles. Please note they are not able to deal with issues of poor service.
Examples of where the SRA could help include:
- Shutting down our firm without telling you.
•Dishonesty or deliberately overcharging you.
•Taking or losing your money.
•Treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic.
The SRA also have useful guidance and resources in relation to reporting your solicitor on their website www.sra.org.uk (tel: 0370 606 2555).
