Complaints

If you are a client and you are dissatisfied with any aspect of the service provided to you we would ask that in the first instance you contact the Partner responsible for the matter or your Client Relationship Partner who will be happy to discuss the matter with you. You are entitled to invoke our complaints procedure. A copy of our UK complaints policy is available here.

A complaint can be made to the Solicitors Regulation Authority of England and Wales (SRA) if it relates to the professional conduct of Allen & Overy or any of its Partners and employees. Further information is available on the SRA's website (https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers). The SRA can be contacted by telephone (0370 606 2555), by email (reports@sra.org.uk) or by post (SRA Report, The Cube, 199 Wharfside Street, Birmingham, B1 1RN).

If the matter is still not resolved at the conclusion of our complaints process, you may be entitled to ask the Legal Ombudsman of England and Wales to consider your complaint. A complaint to the Legal Ombudsman must normally be made within six months of the date of the conclusion of a firm's complaints process and no more than one year from the date of the act/omission, or no more than one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint. The Legal Ombudsman will only consider a complaint from a client, if at the time they raised the complaint, they were:

(a) an individual;

(b) a micro-enterprise;

(c) a charity that had an annual income net of tax of less than GBP1,000,000 (one million pounds sterling);

(d) a club, association or organisation whose affairs are managed by its members, a committee or a committee of its members that had an annual income of less than GBP1,000,000 (one million pounds sterling);

(e) a trustee of a trust that had an asset value of less than GBP1,000,000 (one million pounds sterling);

(f) a personal representative or beneficiary of the estate of a person who, before he/she died, had not referred the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.

Details of how to contact the Legal Ombudsman and further information, including the eligibility criteria for invoking its services, can be found at www.legalombudsman.org.uk.

You have a right to challenge or complain about a bill. If all or part of a bill remains unpaid, we may be entitled to charge interest on the outstanding amount unless a client has raised an unresolved bona fide query.

Please refer to the Country-specific legal notices for local dispute resolution procedures.