Complaints Policy

At SMART Criminal Defence we aim to provide the best possible service to our clients and, in order to do this, we need to know from you if you feel dissatisfied.  Should you have any occasion to feel unhappy about our service, or about the bill, please let me know straight away and we will discuss this with you.  Should you wish to make a complaint, our Client Care Manager, Chris Jacobs, is the person who deals with these matters, and he will be prepared to meet with you to discuss your complaint. We have a procedure in place which details how we handle complaints which is available upon request.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint, then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman who is responsible for investigating complaints about service issues with law firms.

The Legal Ombudsman expects complaints to be made to them within one year of the date of the act or omission about which you are concerned, or within one year of you realising there was a concern. You must also refer your concerns to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to you. Contact details for the Legal Ombudsman are as follows:

Address:             PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH

Telephone:         0300 555 0333

Website:             www.legalombudsman.org.uk

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) can help you if you are concerned about a solicitor’s behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability or other characteristic. You can find information about raising your concerns with the SRA at:

www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/ in the ‘for the public’ section.