Complaints

SHU Law Ltd 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.

If you have a complaint, please write to SHU Law Ltd, marking your correspondence as a complaint. This should be addressed for the attention of our designated complaints handler and supervising solicitor, Sally Mallinson Ayres. If the complaint involves the supervising solicitor, then please mark your complaint for the attention of the Complaints Handler. All complaints should be sent to 51-53 Broomgrove Road, Sheffield, S10 2NA. Alternatively, complaints can be sent to us via email at enquiries@shulaw.co.uk and also via telephone 0114 225 6666. Again if you use these alternative means of contact, please highlight that you wish to make a complaint in accordance with this policy.

What will happen next?

• SHU Law Ltd will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within three working days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
• Your complaint will be reported to the Supervising Solicitor, or if appropriate, the Complaints Handler, who will investigate your complaint.
• A fact-finding exercise involving any of the students and staff that have been working on your case will be carried out so that a full file review can be completed as part of our investigation.
• You will be sent a detailed written reply, including suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 calendar days of sending the acknowledgement letter.
• At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should respond to the person who has sent you the letter asking for the decision to be reviewed. At this stage the matter will either be reviewed by a Director of SHU Law or a third party.
• We will write to you within 14 days of receiving the request for a review to confirm SHU Law Ltd’s final position.
• If you remain dissatisfied, you can involve the Legal Ombudsman (see: legalombudsman.org.uk). 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. For further information, you should contact the Legal Ombudsman by post at: PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ, by telephone on: 0300 555 0333, or by email at: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk. The Legal Ombudsman can help you if you are not happy with a solicitor’s work or service. For example, if they are not replying to your letters, emails and calls or not explaining issues to you properly.

If you have any complaints in relation to any professional conduct issue (for example, if you think that a solicitor has acted dishonestly or you have concerns about their behaviour) then you are also entitled to issue a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor. Examples of behaviour for which you might want to contact the SRA include overcharging you, taking or losing you money or treating you unfairly due to your age, a disability or other characteristic.

If any changes to the timescales above are required, we will notify the complaint and we will advise as to the reasons why we cannot adhere to the original timescales referenced herein.