Mortlock McCormack Law
Complaints Procedure
  1. 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.  You should let us know of any dissatisfaction as soon as it happens so that we can investigate. This will help us improve our standards.

  1. Our Complaints Procedure

    1. In the event that you have a complaint, you can choose whether to contact the partner in charge of your matter or to communicate directly with the General Manager, Mortlock McCormack Law, PO Box 13474, Christchurch or email jan.crooks@mortlock-mccormack.co.nz and mark it “PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL”.

    2. If you do choose to take your complaint to the partner in charge of your matter and they do not resolve the complaint to your satisfaction please write as above, to the General Manager.

    3. Please give us in writing the following details: your name, which member(s) of the firm you are complaining about, the detail of the complaint and what you would like done about it.

  2. What will happen next?

    1. We will send you a letter acknowledging your complaint and possibly asking you to confirm or explain the details set out.  You can expect to receive our letter within five working days of us receiving your complaint.

    2. We will record your complaint in our complaints register and open a file for your complaint.

    3. We will then investigate your complaint.  This may involve one or more of the following steps:

      • We may ask the partner or member of staff who acted for you for their understanding of the events.

      • We may ask the partner or staff member to provide us with a reply to your complaint within fifteen working days. We may examine their reply and the information in the complaint file.  We may then ask them for more information.

      • We may interview any other partners or staff members who may have information about the circumstances of your complaint.

      • We may review the file relating to the services we provided you in order to establish a chain of events and assess whether the work has been performed to the appropriate level of satisfaction.

    1. Once we have established all the facts, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint.  This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter.  This will happen within five working days of us completing our investigation.  Alternatively, we may ask you to meet with us to discuss our findings and to involve you in an appropriate way of resolving your complaint.
    1. If you remain unsatisfied with our proposed action, you can contact us again.  We will then review our decision.  This will happen in one of the following ways:
      • We will arrange for a partner the firm who has not been involved in the complaint to review it.  They will do this within 20 working days.
      • We will ask our local Law Society or another firm of solicitors to review your complaint.  We will send this to them within 10 working days of you contacting us and will let you have an estimate of how long we envisage this will take.
      • We will invite you to agree to independent mediation.  We will let you know how long this process is likely to take.
    1. We will let you know the result of the review within five  working days of the end of the review.  At this time we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explain our reasons. 
    1. If we have to change any of the timeframes above, we will let you know and explain why.

  1. Confidentiality

    All conversations and documents relating to your complaint will be treated as confidential and will be disclosed only to the extent that is legally necessary.

  1. Records

    As part of our commitment to client care we will make a written record of any complaint. Our General Manager inspects the record regularly with a view to improving services.

  1. Complaints to the Law Society

    We hope that you will use our complaints procedure if you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our services. However if you would rather not do so or you are unhappy with the outcome you have the choice of lodging your complaint with the New Zealand Law Society. You can write to them at:

      New Zealand Law Society
      Canterbury Branch
      PO Box 565
      Christchurch

 

 

Andrew Logan · Hamish Douch · Hugh Cottrell · Prue Robertson · Simon Mortlock · Sue McCormack · Tony Herring