SOLICITORS

Our People

Monica Healy has been a partner in the practice for over forty years. During her long career as a solicitor she has experience in many fields of law but now specialises in property law doing residential and commercial conveyancing and probate work

Howard Pallis has been a partner in Clinton Davis Pallis for over 20 years. He has dealt with a wide range of Law but now concentrates on criminal work where he is a Court and Police Station Duty Solicitor

Complaints

We want to give you the best possible service. However, if at any point you become unhappy or concerned about the service we have  provided to you then you should inform us immediately so that we can do our best to resolve the problem for you. In the first instance it may be helpful to contact the individual who is working on your case to discuss any concerns and we will do our best to resolve any issues at this stage. If you would like to make a formal complaint then you can access our full complaints procedure here [link to process].

What happens if I don’t agree with your views on the complaint?

If we are unable to resolve the complaint with you then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates problems about poor service from lawyers.

Before accepting a complaint for investigation the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first. If you have, then you must take your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman:

• No more than one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or
• No more than one year from the date when you should have realised that there was cause for complaint;

        and

• Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman please contact them:

Contact details:

Visit www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Call 0300 555 0333 between 10am to 4pm.

Relay UK: 18001 0300 555 0333

Email enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Legal Ombudsman PO BOX 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH

Our complaints procedure

We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain the details set out.  We will also let you know the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint.  This will normally be either Mr Pallis or Ms Healy.  If the complaint is against either of them it will be investigated by the other Partner, you can expect to receive our letter within 2 days of us receiving your complaint.

 We will record your complaint in our central register and open a separate file for your complaint.  We will do this within a day of receiving your complaint.

 We will acknowledge your reply to our acknowledgement letter and confirm what will happen next.  You can expect to hear from us within a day of your reply.

 We will then start to investigate your complaint  this will normally involve the following steps:-

 The Partner dealing with the complaint will ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 5 days.

 The Partner will then examine their reply and the information in your complaint file and, if necessary, he may also speak to them.  This will take up to 3 days from receiving their reply and the file.

 The partner will then invite you to a meeting and discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint.  This will be done by a Partner and will do this within 3 days.

 Within 2 days of the meeting the Partner will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions agreed with you.

 If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, the partner will send you a detailed reply to your complaint.  This will include suggestions for resolving the matter.  This will be done within 5 days of completing the investigation.

 At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can write to us again.  We will then arrange to review the decision.  This will happen in one of the following ways.

 We will ask our local Law Society or another local firm of solicitors to review your complaint within 5 days.  We will let you know how long this process will take.

 We will invite you to agree to independent mediation within 5 days.  We will let you know how long this process will take.

 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.  We will also give you the name and address of the office for the Supervision of Solicitors. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint.