BWB COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

Our Complaints Policy
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. This will help us improve our standards.

Our Complaints Procedure
If you have a complaint, please first contact the partner in charge of your matter. If the complaint is in connection with that partner or they do not resolve the complaint to your satisfaction you should then address the matter to the Senior Partner who may delegate the handling of your complaint to another partner.

What Will Happen Next?
1. 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 dealing with your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within 5 working days of us receiving your complaint.

2. We will record your complaint in our central register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within 5 working days of receiving your complaint.

3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This may involve one or more of the following steps:

• We may ask the member of staff who acted for you to reply to your complaint within 15 working days. We may examine their reply and the information in the complaint file. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to 5 working days from receiving their reply and the file.

4. We will then send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within 5 working days of us completing our investigation.

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

• The Senior Partner will review his own decision within 10 working days.
• We will arrange for someone in the firm who has not been involved in the complaint to review it. They will do this within 20 working days .
• We will ask our local Law Society or another firm of solicitors to review your complaint. We will send this to them within 10 working days and we will let you have an estimate on how long we envisage this will take.
• We will invite you to agree to independent mediation. We will let you know how long this process will take.

6. We will let you know the result of the review within 5 working days of the end of the review. At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explain our reasons. We will also give you the name and address of our Consumer Complaints Service. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint.

7. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

Further Assistance
Should you require further assistance with regards to your complaints, you can contact The Legal Complaints Service  directly, which helps clients if they have a problem with their solicitor.

There is a helpline on 0845 608 6565. Alternatively, you may visit the Legal Complaints Service website at http://www.legalcomplaints.org.uk/home.page