Complaints Procedure

Our complaints policy

Ai Law 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. Whenever possible, please raise any initial client care problems with the person acting on your matter to give them the opportunity of resolving matters with you. Often matters can be quickly resolved in this way.

How to make a complaint

Ai Law are a high quality professional law firm that prides itself on its results. However, sometimes there may be something that you are not happy with. If you have a concern or a complaint, then in the first instance you should raise this with the case handler. The case handler is the person that you have been speaking to about your case. If you have been speaking with more than one person on your matter, then you can raise the complaint with either one of the case handlers, or alternatively ask the relevant person for the details of the department supervisor.

If the person handling your case or their supervisor cannot resolve your issue, or you would rather not raise it with them, please make your complaint to our client care director, Tom Ellis, in whichever way suits you:

By email: tme@ai-law.co.uk

By post: Tom Ellis, Ai Law, 8 Water Street, Liverpool L2 8TD

By telephone: 0151 294 4722

It will help us if you tell us:

● that you are making a complaint under this complaints procedure;

● your full name and contact details, along with details of your case, including any reference number that you have been given;

● why you are dissatisfied with the service, and a full background to what has happened; and

● what you would like to happen as a result of your complaint.

If you need us to make reasonable adjustments to help you make a complaint — for example because of a disability — please tell us, and we will make them.

What will happen next?

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within seven working days of our receiving the complaint, and where necessary request further information.

2. We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our client care director, Tom Ellis, who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you.

3. If deemed appropriate, the director will then invite you to a meeting to discuss the complaint with a view to resolving it.

4. A full response to the complaint and the outcome of any meeting or discussion will be sent within 28 days of either receipt of the complaint or the date of any meeting or discussion, whichever is the later.

5. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again to explain why you remain unhappy with our response and we will review your comments. Depending on the matter we may at this stage arrange for another director to review the decision.

6. We will write to you within 14 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons and, if the firm accepts that the complaint is valid, the firm will set out a course of action that it considers appropriate to resolve the complaint.

7. If you are still not satisfied at this stage, you can ask the Legal Ombudsman to consider your complaint (see below). We hope that this does not become necessary and that we can resolve matters between ourselves.

If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why. If we have not resolved your complaint within eight weeks of receiving it, you can go to the Legal Ombudsman even if our procedure has not finished.

The Legal Ombudsman

The Legal Ombudsman is an independent body that deals with complaints about the service lawyers provide, including complaints about bills. You can ask it to consider your complaint if:

● we have not resolved your complaint to your satisfaction within eight weeks of your making it to us; or

● you are unhappy with our final response to your complaint.

Time limits: you must normally refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of our final response to it (the six-month limit applies where our final response told you about the Ombudsman and that time limit), and no more than one year from the date of the act or omission you are complaining about, or one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint. The Ombudsman may extend these time limits where it considers it fair to do so.

The Ombudsman deals with complaints from individuals, from micro-enterprises, and from charities, clubs and trusts within the limits set out in its Scheme Rules. It will normally check that you have used our complaints procedure first.

Post: Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH

Telephone: 0300 555 0333 (Relay UK: 18001 0300 555 0333; from outside the UK: +44 121 245 3050)

Email: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

Website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk, which gives the Ombudsman’s current telephone opening hours

Solicitors Regulation Authority

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regulates solicitors and law firms. It does not deal with complaints about the service you have received — those come to us and then, if need be, to the Legal Ombudsman.

But if you are concerned about our behaviour — for example dishonesty, taking or losing your money, unfair discrimination, or any other breach of the SRA’s rules — you can report it to the Solicitors Regulation Authority at any time. You do not need to use our complaints procedure first.

Report online: www.sra.org.uk/report

Telephone: 0370 606 2555 (from outside the UK: +44 (0)121 820 2250)

Post: Solicitors Regulation Authority, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham B1 1RN

Complaints in relation to bills

You can complain about our bill under this procedure and then, if you remain unhappy, to the Legal Ombudsman, in the same way as any other complaint.

You may also have the right to apply to the court for our bill to be assessed under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. If you apply within one month of our delivering the bill, the court must order an assessment. After one month, the court may order one on such terms as it thinks fit. Once twelve months have passed since the bill was delivered, or after it has been paid or a judgment has been obtained for it, an assessment can be ordered only in special circumstances — and not at all on your application more than twelve months after the bill was paid (section 70).

The Legal Ombudsman may not be able to consider a complaint about a bill if you have applied to the court for that bill to be assessed.

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This complaints procedure was last updated on 15 October 2026.