Complaining to the Ombudsman

[BaileyRockallShannon]

Hello

can I put a complaint in about a solicitor/legal firm when I am not their client?

Personally I don't know. However you can still lodge a complaint and see what happens. They should write back to you regardless of the outcome of your complaint

No, the legal ombudsman is for investigating complaints made by clients / service users, and they’ll expect you to have gone through the firms internal complaints process first too. A complaint about a solicitor / firm you’ve never used will just be dismissed

No because you have no contractual relationship with them. However there’s nothing to stop you writing to the senior partner of their firm saying “I was involved in X in which your Mr Bloggs was representing another party and I was concerned about…….” if you want to dob Mr Bloggs in

The Solicitors Regulation Authority will be interested if they've actually broken the rules, whether or not you're a client.

Actually you don't have to be a client/user, we had this with an estate agent, we weren't their client so the EA wouldn't let us complain so I went to the ombudsman and they found against the EA and made them pay me because they should have let me complain.

It depends on what the issue is. If it’s something where they may be acting on instructions you will get nowhere. My clients often tell me for example that they need to ensure I don’t respond on something until a particular date. The clients of the solicitor on the other side probably think I’m ridiculously slow. It’s deliberate and I’m working on instructions.

You need to go through the firm's complaints procedure before you go to the SRA or the ombudsman. However, without knowing the nature of your complaint it is impossible to say whether you would get anywhere with this.

Thank you.

My complaint is that they have lied about now closed local authority investigation and said that there are conditional reasons for them closing a case. They say the case was only closed because of these non existent conditions being in place.

I have spoken to the local authority (yet again) and this is entirely false - which I knew because had there been conditions set then I would have been told as it would have been a safeguarding issue.

It is not clear from that description whether the solicitor was being untruthful or simply acting on instructions. If they were acting on instructions, you do not have a complaint against them.

If these lies that they have been instructed to tell are repeated in court documents do they then become something that I can object to/complain about?

No. A solicitor is not required to independently check the truth of what their client tells them. If they are acting under instructions, your complaint is against their client, not the solicitor.