- Your conduct or the conduct of a person at your entity; or
- The service you provide to your clients
Conduct complaints (breaches of the CILEx Code of Conduct)
Conduct complaints or other information received about your personal and professional conduct are investigated by CILEx Regulation. Conduct will be assessed against the CILEx Code of Conduct.
Breaches of the Code of Conduct may include providing legal advice when you are not competent or authorised to do so, acting dishonestly, failing to comply with a court order or misappropriation of money.
CILEx Regulation cannot deal with complaints about the service you provided – see below. The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) may refer matters to CILEx Regulation if it considers that the service complaint discloses conduct issues about you.
Service complaints
Service complaints relate to the quality of the service you provide to clients. Service issues include allegations about delay, failure to provide case progress updates to clients, or issues relating to client costs.
All legal service providers must have an in-house complaints handling procedure which you should provide to clients when you are first instructed or as soon as practicable. If a client has a complaint about the service you have provided (or anyone else in the entity) they must submit their complaint in accordance with your complaints procedure. They should do this before they contact the LeO.
If the complaint is not dealt with satisfactorily, the complainant can refer their service complaint to the LeO. You should provide contact details for LeO to your client at the same time as you provide information about your complaints handling procedure. Further details can be found on their website.
CILEx Regulation has developed guidance for you on complaints handling which can be found here.
