Complaints Procedure
Harris Hagan is committed to providing high quality legal advice and client care. If something goes wrong, or you are unhappy with any aspect of our service, please tell us about it as soon as possible. We are committed to resolving any problems with you swiftly and to continually improve our standards.
Please be assured that your complaint will be dealt with promptly, fairly and free of charge.
Initial concerns
You should first contact the person with whom you are normally dealing on a day- to-day basis, and thereafter the responsible partner (whose name will have been notified to you at the outset of the matter). In most cases, an informal chat with the person or partner responsible for your matter will resolve your concerns.
If it does not and you remain unhappy about any aspect of the service you have received from Harris Hagan, please contact:
John Hagan
Managing Partner
020 7002 7638
[email protected]
Bahar Alaeddini
Partner
020 7002 7643
[email protected]
What we need to know
To deal with your complaint correctly, it would be helpful when contacting us if you could provide the following information:
- Your name, contact details and preferred contact method
- File reference number
- Details of your concerns
- How you would like us to put things right.
What will happen next?
If you telephone us, we will endeavour to resolve the issue in that call.
If you email or write to us, or if your complaint cannot be resolved in a phone call, we will acknowledge receipt of your complaint in writing within two days of receiving it.
A Partner will conduct an initial investigation into the issues raised. This will normally involve reviewing your file and speaking to the staff member who acted for you. We will send you a detailed reply which sets out our findings and any action plans or proposed resolutions within five weeks of sending you the acknowledgement letter or receiving the telephone call.
If this initial investigation does not resolve your concerns, you can escalate your complaint to another Partner. We will need a few details from you to highlight the areas that need further review. We will then write to you within two weeks of receiving your request for a second review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasoning.
If we have to change any of these timescales, we will let you know, explain why and seek your agreement before proceeding.
What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint
If you have exhausted our internal escalation process yet remain dissatisfied, or a period of eight weeks has expired since we acknowledged your complaint without our final response being received, you are entitled to refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman will look at the complaint independently and any investigation by them will not affect how we handle your case. Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve the complaint with us in the first instance. We will always be happy to discuss your issues further, prior to you going down this route, if you wish to do so.
- Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk
- Phone: 0300 555 0333
- Email: [email protected]
- Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV19 9WJ
Any complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must usually be made within six months of the date of our final written response to your complaint. Other time limits to be aware of are:
- The Legal Ombudsman will consider your complaint if you refer it on to them
within either of the following: six years of the problem happening or three years
from when you found out about it. - The Legal Ombudsman will not accept complaints where the act/omission or
the date of awareness was before 5 October 2010.
Note that the Legal Ombudsman service cannot be used by businesses or most
other organisations unless they are below certain size limits. Further details are
available from the Legal Ombudsman.
In certain circumstances, you may also complain to our regulator, the Solicitors
Regulation Authority:
- Website: www.sra.org.uk
- Phone: 0370 606 2555
- Email: [email protected]
- Post: Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN.
This complaints policy was last updated on 11 January 2024.