FMT Solicitors is committed to providing a high standard of legal service. If you are
dissatisfied with any aspect of our service, including our fees, we encourage you to tell
us so that we can investigate your concerns and seek to resolve them promptly and fairly.
We regard a complaint as any expression of dissatisfaction, whether made verbally or in
writing, which alleges you have suffered, or may suffer, financial loss, distress,
inconvenience, or other detriment.
If you have a complaint, please contact us with full details of your concerns. We may ask
you to confirm your complaint in writing to assist us in investigating the issues raised.
Complaints may be made by post, email or telephone.
We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 5 working days of receipt.
If your complaint is emailed outside of our usual oƯice hours, it will be deemed to be
received when the oƯice reopens, and the timescales stated below will begin from that date.
Our acknowledgement will:
If you believe we have misunderstood or omitted any aspect of your complaint, please
notify us as soon as possible.
Your complaint will be investigated by a senior member of the firm, who will review the relevant file and discuss the matter with the staff member involved.
Where appropriate, we may contact you to request further information or to clarify your
concerns.
We may also contact you by telephone or arrange a meeting if we believe this may assist in resolving the complaint. However, complaints will usually be investigated and
responded to in writing.
We are committed to providing our final response to you as soon as possible and, in any
event, within 8 weeks of receiving your complaint.
Our final response will set out:
If we are unable to issue a final response within 8 weeks, we will inform you of this, explain the reason(s) for the delay, and state when we expect to be able to respond.
If you remain dissatisfied following our final response, or we have not issued our final
response within 8 weeks, you may have the right to refer your complaint to the Legal
Ombudsman, also known as the LeO.
The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be referred to them:
The LeO can be contacted as follows:
Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
Telephone: 0300 555 0333 (9am and 1pm Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays)
Relay UK: 18001 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Further information is available online.
Alternative dispute resolution organisation such as ProMediate are competent to deal with complaints about legal services, if you and we agree to use such a scheme. FMT Solicitors does not agree to use ProMediate, as we believe that the Legal Ombudsman is best suited to deal with legal complaints.
You may have the right to complain about, or challenge, your bill by applying to the court
for assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974.
FMT Solicitors may be entitled to charge interest if all or part of our bill(s) remains unpaid. Please refer to our Client Care Guide for further information.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regulates solicitors and law firms in England and Wales. It generally deals with concerns relating to professional misconduct or
breaches of regulatory obligations, rather than complaints about service levels.
Further information is available online.
