Our Complaints Policy

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 standards. Making a complaint will not affect how we handle your matter.

Which entity provided your service?

You may be receiving legal advice from our solicitors directly from Elevate, through what we call Subscription Services, rather than from ElevateNext UK Ltd. If that is the case, the protections described on this page, including your right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman and to the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the way set out below, may not apply to that work in the same way. If you are not sure which applies to you, please check your engagement letter or ask your relationship lawyer to confirm.

Our Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint about the services we have provided or about a bill, please contact the supervising solicitor or Registered Foreign Lawyer named in your Terms of Business.

Your client care principal will either be Matt Todd, Director and Compliance Officer for Legal Practice or Steve Harmon, Director. You can email your client care principal at matthew.todd@elevate.law or steve.harmon@elevate.law, respectively, or write to them at ElevateNext UK Ltd, 1 Central Parkway, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, NE1 3BZ, United Kingdom, or call +44 (0) 207 127 2500.

There is no charge for using this procedure. 

What will happen next – 1st Stage

1. We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days of receiving it.
2. Within the same period, we will record your complaint in our central complaints register and open a file for it.
3. We will investigate your complaint and seek to arrive at a solution within 10 working days of your initial complaint, and write to you with the outcome within this period.
4. Should the matter be complicated, it may take us longer to fully consider your concerns. If that happens, we will let you know when you should expect a response beyond the 10 working day period.
5. We may call you or ask you to attend our offices to discuss your concerns if we believe that would help resolve your complaint. If this happens, we will write to you confirming the outcome within 5 working days of that discussion.
6. If we have not sent you our decision within 8 weeks of you first raising your complaint, you do not have to wait for us and you can refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman at that point (see below).

Appeal – 2nd Stage

7. If you are not satisfied with our 1st Stage decision, you can ask us to reconsider it by writing to us again within 20 working days. We will review our decision and write to you with our final decision within 7 working days of your appeal letter (our 2nd Stage decision). Your appeal will be considered by whichever of Matt Todd or Steve Harmon did not make the 1st Stage decision. You do not have to go through this appeal stage before referring your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman — you can do so once we have given you a decision, or once 8 weeks have passed, whichever is sooner.

Legal Ombudsman

8. We aim to resolve all complaints satisfactorily and will ask you to confirm whether you accept our decision (1st or 2nd Stage, as applicable), usually within 20 working days. If you remain unhappy with our decision, or with how long it is taking, you can refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, an independent complaints body established under the Legal Services Act 2007, which can investigate complaints about the legal services you have received from us.
9. Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you have tried to resolve it with us first. Subject to that, you must refer your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman within six months of the date of our final response to your complaint, and no later than one year from the date of the act or omission you are complaining about, or one year from the date you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.
10. You can contact the Legal Ombudsman by visiting www.legalombudsman.org.uk, calling 0300 555 0333, or emailing enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk.

What to do if you are unhappy with our behavior

The Solicitors Regulation Authority can help if you are concerned about our behaviour. This could be for things like dishonesty, taking or losing your money, or treating you unfairly because of your age, a disability, or other characteristics.

Visit their website to see how you can raise your concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.