Complaints we can help with

Complaints we can help with

The Legal Ombudsman is here to resolve service-related complaints about regulated legal service providers. We can only help if your legal service provider is regulated. You can see a list of regulators here.

The most common complaint types that we resolve are often about:

• Costs – where the costs were unclear or not advised appropriately or timely.
• Delay – if there is no clear reason or explanation provided for the work taking longer than expected.
• Poor information - a process wasn't well explained, or there wasn’t enough information for a consumer to make an informed choice.

Complaints we can't help with

There are some circumstances where we can’t help. Please see the examples below:

• We can’t give legal advice or recommend a legal service provider.
• We can’t help you with a complaint about somebody else’s service provider.
• We can’t stop a service provider taking legal action to recover outstanding costs while a complaint is awaiting investigation, or if the complaint is in the process of being investigated.
• We also can’t insist that the service provider releases a file or documents from a case file where there are outstanding costs.
• We can’t change or influence decisions made by a Court or other complaint schemes.
• If you have been refused a service, we can’t insist a service provider takes you on as a client.