How do I complain about my solicitor?

Every regulated firm must have a written complaints procedure and a designated complaints handler, usually a senior partner or the firm's compliance officer. Write to them quoting your file reference, set out what went wrong and when, state the impact — money lost, distress, a missed legal deadline — and say what outcome you want. The firm must acknowledge promptly and give a final response within 8 weeks.

Service or misconduct? The routes are different

The Legal Ombudsman deals with service: delays, poor communication, work not done, overcharging, failing to explain costs. It covers solicitors, barristers (including direct access), licensed conveyancers, legal executives, notaries and costs lawyers in England and Wales, and it can be used by individuals, small businesses and charities, and by executors and beneficiaries about the administration of an estate.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority deals with misconduct: dishonesty, misuse of client money, undisclosed conflicts of interest, breaches of confidentiality, discrimination. It can rebuke, fine, suspend or strike off — but it awards you nothing. For barristers the equivalent is the Bar Standards Board. Where the same facts raise both, complain to both; the processes run in parallel.

Deadlines, powers and the alternatives

Two Legal Ombudsman deadlines apply and both must be met: 6 months from the firm's final response, and 1 year from the act or omission — or from when you should reasonably have realised there was cause for complaint. The six-month bar only bites if the final response actually signposted the Ombudsman, gave its contact details and warned of the deadline; where it did not, that limb falls away, which occasionally rescues a complaint.

The Ombudsman can order an apology, the work put right, documents returned, a fee reduction or refund with no upper limit, and compensation of up to £50,000 — though in practice compensation is modest and the fee refund is usually the larger part. A decision you accept binds the firm and is enforceable in court.

Two other routes exist. A bill you think is excessive can be sent for detailed assessment by the court under the Solicitors Act 1974, normally within one month of receiving it — but beware the one-fifth rule: fail to knock a fifth off and you can end up paying for the exercise. And where the loss was caused by negligence rather than poor service, the remedy is a professional negligence claim against the firm's compulsory insurance, on its own six-year clock.