Complaints Policy

Our complaints policy

Vine Law is 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 to improve our standards. Whenever possible, please raise any initial client care problems with the person acting on your matter to give them the opportunity to resolve the problem with you. Often matters can be quickly resolved in this way.

Our complaints procedure

If you have a concern or a complaint that has not been dealt with to your satisfaction by the person handling your case or their supervising partner, please contact us as soon as you are aware of the problem so this can be addressed.

What will happen next?

We will:

• Send you an acknowledgement of your complaint within 7 days of receiving it;

• Log your complaint on our central complaints register;

• Investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our client care partner, Melinda Smith melindasmith@vinelaw.co.uk , who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.

• Arrange a discussion with you to try to agree on how to resolve the issues within 21 days of receiving your complaint;

• Write to you within 3 days of the meeting to confirm what took place and any solutions agreed with you. If you do not want a meeting or if a meeting is not possible, we will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint, including our suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.

(In exceptional circumstances it may be necessary to extend these timescales but we will try to agree on any variations with you first.)

At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again to explain why you remain unhappy with our response and we will review your comments. Depending on the matter we may at this stage arrange for another partner to review the decision.

We will write to you within 14 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reason.

If you are still not satisfied, you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider your complaint. We hope that this does not become necessary and that we can resolve matters between ourselves.

The Legal Ombudsman’s contact details are:

Address: PO Box 6167, Slough, SL1 0EH
Telephone: 0300 555 0333 - from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm
E-mail: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving a final written response from us about your complaint and within the following timescales:

• Six years from the date of the act or omission about which you are complaining occurring; or
• Three years from the date you should reasonably have known there were grounds for complaint.

The complaints procedure above also applies to complaints arising concerning our bill. There may also be a right to object to the bill by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. The Legal Ombudsman may not consider a complaint about a bill if you have applied to the court for assessment of that bill.