Introduction
Rosenblatt is a trading division of RBG Legal Services Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA ID 820215). We take complaints seriously and always endeavour to provide all our clients with high levels of commitment to customer care and expertise. However, we appreciate that on occasion, we can fall short of our own high expectations. This can sometimes give rise to a formal complaint being made. We regard our complaints process as an opportunity to monitor and improve our quality of service. Whatever the outcome of a complaint, we will always look for ways to improve client’s experiences when instructing us.
1. How to make a complaint
All solicitors in England and Wales are under an obligation to provide a complaints handling procedure (CHP). Please, note, solicitors are expected to exhaust this procedure before you have the right to request The Legal Ombudsman, to assist you. Any concerns or complaints you may have in relation to our services should be raised in the first instance, in writing with the Matter Partner (who will be named in the client care letter we sent you at the beginning of your matter). We do encourage you and our solicitors, to attempt informally resolving, any concerns you have, before we formally investigate in line with the procedure described below. The Matter Partner will investigate the subject matter of your concern(s), or complaint(s), promptly, and attempt to resolve the issue to yours and our mutual satisfaction. If the Matter Partner is also the person to whom you wish to raise a formal complaint against, you can follow the procedure described below.
If such a resolution cannot be achieved with the solicitor and/or Matter Partner, or if the concern or complaint relates to the Matter Partner, you should contact the Company’s Administration Director, Anthony Field at anthony.field@rosenblatt.co.uk and/or our Head of Risk and Compliance, Ceri Hughes, at ceri.hughes@rbgls.co.uk, in writing, (We are of course content to discuss your concerns with us, but we will need to agree, the issues that you wish us to investigate and these will need to be, confirmed in writing).
Should the complaint in turn relate to the Administration Director, Anthony Field, then you should refer the matter to Ceri Hughes (Mr).
To help us understand your complaint, and in order that we do not miss anything, please tell us:
(a) Your full name and contact details.
(b) Full details of your complaint; Be precise, the more information you provide us, together with any documentary evidence in support of what you say, generally makes the process more efficient.
(c) How you would like your complaint resolved; and
(d) Your file reference number (if you have it).
If you require any help in making your complaint, we will try to help you.
2. How we will deal with your complaint
The Administration Director and/or Ceri Hughes has been appointed to try to resolve disagreements between the firm and its clients. They will:
Acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 5 business days and explain the procedure that will be followed and general time frames it will take to investigate your concerns.
We will consider your complaint and carry out a full investigation. The first stage is to identify the heads of complaint and to ask you to confirm, that these are agreed. After we have agreed the heads of complaint, we start investigating your concerns internally. We will usually write to you with our views, into the service you received, within 14 days of agreeing the heads of complaint. If the matter is complex and we feel it will take longer for us to fully investigate your complaint, we will contact you to give you an approximate timescale for when you can expect a full response to your complaint. We usually progress the vast majority of complaints to first substantive response (FSR), by no later than 21 and/or 28 days for complex matters. We may also need to ask you for further information or documents. If so, we will ask you to provide the information within a specified period of time.
Please note that any decision reached during our investigation, will be based upon the documentary evidence made available to us (either provided by you), or obtained from an internal review of the file. We can only reach our conclusions based upon the documentary evidence made available to us, not what one person recollects (as we are not a court of law).
In addition, when conducting an investigation into a service complaint, the standard of service we are looking for, during the time we acted for you, is of a ‘reasonable’ level of service (and not the best possible service).
We are also prohibited from commenting upon the solicitor’s professional opinion (in other words, the route they recommend you follow and/or the legal advice provided to you during the course of the retainer). Our investigation is limited to issues relating to the service you received. Of course, if that advice and/or route taken, falls below a standard, expected of a reasonably competent solicitor, we are able to form an objective opinion of those facts, during our investigation.
After reviewing the documentary evidence, we will write to you in line with the agreed timeframe, providing you with our views into the service you received. We will also forward copies of any documentary evidence we have relied upon in reaching our views, at this stage.
If we identify that you did receive an element of poor service, we will let you know the reasons for this and either;
- Issue you with an apology
- Offer compensation for any distress and inconvenience caused
- Reduce your invoices to reflect the poor service identified
- Reduce your invoice and/or pay compensation
- Take remedial steps on your behalf without any additional charges
If during our investigation we identify negligence, we will inform you (this is quite different to poor service that we will be investigating under the CHP). Negligence involves a breach of a duty of care towards you and as a result, direct financial losses have crystalised (are easy to quantify/identify). We will notify our insurers of the circumstance and you may have to take independent legal advice. We will still investigate the service issues if we are permitted to do so.
After receiving our FSR, we will ask you to provide us with your comments, usually within 14 days of receiving our FSR. If you require additional time in which to provide us with any comments you wish for us to consider, you must write to us with such a request.
Any comments you provide, if you are looking to vary any aspect of our views, must be accompanied by new documentary evidence.
After receiving your comments and documentary evidence, we will write to you, usually within a further 14 days, to let you know whether your comments have resulted in a variation of our earlier views.
We will let you know that we have exhausted our CHP and where possible, what options are available to you.
3. What to do if we are unable to resolve your complaint
If we have not resolved your complaint within 8 weeks, you may be able to complain to the Legal Ombudsman. This applies if you are an individual, a business with fewer than 10 employees and turnover or assets not exceeding a certain threshold, a charity or trust with a net income of less than £1m, or if you fall within certain other categories (you can find out more from the Legal Ombudsman). If you fall into one of the above categories, then you still have the right to complain via our complaints procedure.
The Legal Ombudsman’s contact details are as follows:
PO Box 6167
Slough, SL1 0EH
Tel: 0300 555 0333
Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within a year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned or within a year of you realising there was a concern, or within six months of our final response to you under the firm’s complaints handling procedure.
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) bodies exist which are competent to deal with complaints about legal services should both you and ourselves wish to use such a scheme. We have, however, chosen not to adopt an ADR process. If, therefore, you wish to complain further, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman.
If we are unable to resolve your complaint, and it relates to a contract we entered into online or by other electronic means, you may also be able to submit your complaint to an approved alternative dispute resolution provider in the UK via the EU ‘ODR platform’.
The ODR platform is an interactive website offering a single point of entry for disputes between consumers and traders relating to online contracts. The ODR platform is available to consumer clients only, ie where you have instructed us for purposes outside your trade, business, craft or profession.
The website address for the ODR platform is: http://ec.europa.eu/odr
4. What will it cost?
We will not charge you for handling your complaint.
Please note that if we have issued a bill for work done on the matter, and all or some of the bill is not paid, we may be entitled to charge interest on the amount outstanding. This is explained in our Terms of Business. We will also consider whether to exercise a lien (withhold your papers and property if you have any outstanding invoices). We can and sometimes will issue debt recovery proceedings if our invoices remain unpaid (and in some instances, even where a service complaint has been issued).
The Legal Ombudsman service is free of charge.
The ODR platform itself is free to use, but the ADR entity to which the complaint is transmitted may charge for its service. The ADR entity is responsible for informing all parties of the cost of its dispute resolution procedure.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability, or another characteristic.
You can raise any concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority via this link:
https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor
5. Professional Indemnity Insurance Details
Our Primary Layer Professional Indemnity Insurers are American International Group, Fortegra (NBS underwriting, underwritten by Accelerant Insurance Europe SA) and Starr International Group (Europe) Limited under Ref SPI24017598A. The territorial scope of the Primary Layer is worldwide and the Policy complies with the applicable requirements of the legal services regulators in England and Wales.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help you if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things such as dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability, or another characteristic.
You can raise any concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority via this link:
