COMPLAINTS AND FEEDBACK

At Gherson LLP, 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 so that we can resolve the problem and continually improve our standards.

If you have a complaint, please contact Roger Gherson, our Senior Partner, at roger@gherson.co.uk. He can be reached by email or at the address below:

17a-19 Harcourt Street
London W1H 4HF

What will happen next?

1. Within three working days of receiving your complaint, we will acknowledge its receipt. We will provide details of who will be dealing with your complaint, and when you can expect to have a response. It may be necessary at this stage to ask you for more information, or to invite you to meet with us to discuss your complaint.
2. We will record your complaint in our central register and investigate it by reviewing the relevant file and the issues you raise. The member of staff who acted for you may be required to provide further details.
3. We will then provide you with a detailed written response to your complaint, which may include our suggestions for resolving the matter.  We will aim to do this within five days of acknowledging your letter or of having received any further information we may have requested from you, if necessary.  If your complaint is very detailed, or your matter has been very complex, it may take us longer to complete a review and to respond to you, but we will keep you advised if this is the case. Once again, it may be necessary to ask you to come in and meet with us in order to discuss your complaint before we are able to respond fully.
4. Within three days of any meeting we have with you we will write to you to confirm what took place and any suggestions we have agreed with you.
5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, please let us know. We will then arrange to review our decision. We will generally aim to do this within 14 days.
6. If necessary, we will then write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explain our reasons.

Data Protection Complaints

If you have a complaint about how we collect, use, store or otherwise process your personal data, please contact us in the first instance using the details above, so that we can investigate your concerns.

We will acknowledge receipt of any data protection complaint within 30 days.

We will investigate your concerns without undue delay. If the complaint is complex and requires more time to investigate thoroughly, we will keep you updated on our progress and explain the reasons for any delay.

Once our investigation is complete, we will write to you with our formal response and outcome, setting out the steps we have taken to review the matter.

If you remain dissatisfied with our response, you may have the right to raise your concerns with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk

Complaining about our costs

In certain circumstances, you may have the right to request the court to perform a detailed assessment of our costs.

Complaining to the Legal Ombudsman about us

If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint, you can ask the Legal Ombudsman (contact details below) to consider the complaint. Normally, you will need to bring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint, and no later than one year from the date of act or omission or one year from when you should have realised that there was a cause for complaint.

Legal Ombudsman
PO Box 6167
Slough
SL1 0EH
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Telephone: 0300 555 0333
The Legal Ombudsman service is free of charge. For more details, go to: www.legalombudsman.org.uk/for-consumers/complaints-process/bringing-a-complaint-to-us/

Complaining to the Solicitors Regulation Authority about us

For some types of complaints about solicitors, you may contact the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). This is the regulatory body which authorises and regulates UK law firms. The SRA can help you if you think a solicitor might be dishonest or you have complaints about their behaviour, for example:

• Shutting down their law firm without telling you;
• Dishonesty or deliberately overcharging you;
• Taking or losing your money; or
• Treating you unfairly because of your age, disability or other characteristic.

If you have a complaint that relates to the breach of an SRA principle, that complaint should be made to the SRA (Solicitors Regulation Authority). The contact details for the SRA are below:

Solicitors Regulation Authority
The Cube
199 Wharfside Street
Birmingham
B1 1RN
Telephone: 0370 606 2555
More information can be found at  www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/

Complaining to the Legal Ombudsman or the SRA about us

You must always complain to us first, and, in most cases, you will not be able to take your complaint any further if you have not done so. Please use the process set out above to complain to us about the service you have received. We will always try to resolve your complaint as quickly and satisfactorily as we can.