R U S S E L L - C O O K E : about us : complaints procedure

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We are 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 service to you.

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If you have a complaint, you should initially raise any concerns with the fee earner dealing with your matter. If the complaint cannot be resolved you should contact the Departmental Client Care Partner (details are provided in the retainer letter sent to you at the outset of the matter).

If you wish your complaint to be formally logged in the Firm’s central register at this stage (prior to any referral to the Complaints Secretary) you should write to the Client Care Partner specifying your complaint and requesting that it be recorded.

In the event that the matter is still unresolved you should contact the Complaints Secretary and set out your complaint in writing.

Please address your correspondence to ‘The Complaints Secretary, Russell-Cooke, 2 Putney Hill, Putney, London SW15 6AB’.

If you write initially to the Complaints Secretary or the Senior Partner, your complaint will be logged and referred to the Departmental Client Care Partner to respond. If you are not satisfied with the response, you may then write to the Complaints Secretary asking for your complaint to be considered formally.

We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint within 7 days of receipt. We may ask you to confirm or explain any details. We will then refer the matter to a complaints caseworker who will investigate your complaint and examine the relevant file.

We will open a file for your complaint and record it in our central register.

The caseworker will seek to mediate your complaint and resolve it to your satisfaction if this is possible. If the complaints caseworker considers that it would assist in fully understanding your complaint, he/she may invite you to attend a meeting.

In the event that the caseworker is unable to resolve the matter, he/she will prepare a report on the complaint and refer the matter together with the report to the Senior Partner for a decision. If it is not appropriate for the Senior Partner to consider your complaint it will be referred to the Managing Partner or another designated Partner within the Firm. A copy of the caseworker’s report will be sent to you at the same time and you will have 14 days from its receipt to make further representations.

Following the Senior Partner’s decision we will write to you confirming the Firm’s formal response to your complaint and explaining our reasons. We will also give you the name and address of the solicitors’ regulator. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact them about your complaint. We very much hope that this will not be necessary.