Complaints
Montpellier Legal Ltd is committed to providing a high quality conveyancing service provision, and to client care. In the unlikely event that you are in any way dissatisfied about any aspect of the service that you receive however, or about an invoice, please initially contact the allocated team member dealing with your matter as soon as possible so that we can do our best to resolve the problem straight away for you.
We will aim to respond to your complaint within two working days from your raising it with us. If the team member is unable to resolve matters to your satisfaction then please contact our Complaints Handling Partner (Simon Thomas) to formalise your complaint. He can be contacted on 01242 472200; and via email on or equally by post to any of our published offices. We have a full procedure in place which details how we handle complaints, which we shall be happy to provide to you on request, should we not have already resolved matters with you satisfactorily.
In terms of how we go about trying to resolve your complaint, if you call us, we shall endeavour to resolve the matter on the call. Where you email or post a letter to us, we will write back within 2 working days, acknowledging your correspondence, inform you who will be investigating it, and when they will reply to you. Although the Legal Ombudsman allow us 8 weeks to resolve a client complaint, you should hear from our investigator within 4 to 6 weeks whenever we are able to. If after exhausting the initial complaint, and having also formalised the complaint still to no avail, or the 8 week time limit elapses without receiving our final response, you are entitled to refer your complaint to an Ombudsman Scheme or for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).
Legal Ombudsman
If we are unable to resolve your complaint then you can have the complaint independently looked at by the Legal Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman investigates complaints about service issues with lawyers. Normally, you will need to bring a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman – having received a final written response from us about your complaint – within one year from the date of the act or omission being complained about; or, one year from the date when the complainant should have realised that there was cause for complaint. If you would like more information about this service, including the time limits for taking a case to them, please contact the Legal Ombudsman directly. You can find out more about their service by visiting www.legalombudsman.org.uk or contacting them on 0300 555 0333 or by post to Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9VV.
If your unsolved complaint relates to an insurance policy covering your case, you may contact the Financial Ombudsman Service:
Phone: 0800 023 4567
Post: Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London E14 9SR
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is a form of mediation similar, but separate to, the Legal Ombudsman. Companies exist who may be competent to mediate in some disputes, but you would need to obtain our express prior permission to use such a company. This doesn’t apply to contacting the Legal Ombudsman, which you can do at any time. You can find out more about ADR online.
The Legal Ombudsman aims to resolve complaints and assist clients and their solicitors to reach a mutual agreement. There are, however, time limits for submitting complaints to them. These time limits also apply for referrals to the Financial Ombudsman Service:
- Within six months of receiving our final response
- Eight weeks after lodging your complaint with us, if you haven’t received out final response
- Within six years of the date of the act/omission if you haven’t previously complained, or
- Three years from the date that you should have known you had a complaint to pursue and had not complained previously (if the act/ omission occurred more than six years ago).
- Please note that from the 1st April 2023 these time limits are changing. From the 1st April 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.
- The Legal Ombudsman won’t accept complaints where the act/ omission or date of awareness was before 6 October 2010.